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The College Girl of America 



Works of 

Mary Caroline Crawford 



The Romance of Old New Eng- 
land Roof trees . ♦ . . $1.50 

The Romance of Old New Eng- 
land Churches ♦ • . ♦ J.50 

The College Girl of America, net J. 60 

postpaid J»75 

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

New England Building 

Boston, Mass. 



^"^'^ 





A TYPICAL COLLEGE GIRL OF AMERICA 




%\}t College (girl 
of ameriea ^ ^ 

AND THE INSTITUTIONS WHICH 
MAKE HER WHAT SHE IS 



By 
MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD 

AUTHOR OF " THE ROMANCE OF OLD NEW 
ENGLAND ROOFTREES," "THE ROMANCE 
OF OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES," ETC. 



^Unstxnttti 




L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 
BOSTON i:? tib 'l:^ 1905 



OCT 28 1904 









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Copyright^ igo4 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 



All rights reserved 



Published October, 1904 



COLONIAL PRESS 

Electroiyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds &* Co. 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



INSCRIBED 
TO THE MEMORY OF 

SlUce jfrecman palmer 

WHO LOVED ALL COLLEGE GIRLS 

" Hers was a life in industry and energy marvellous 
and undaunted, dedicated to large and ever larger 
uses, and inspired from first to last by the loftiest 
ideality." — Richard Watson Gilder, 



Introduction 



The college girl is to-day a force second to none 
in American life. She it is who will mould the 
minds, modify the manners, and help raise the 
moral tone of the men and women of the future. 
And she will do this not merely through her school- 
teacher function, — though there, of course, her in- 
fluence must be tremendous, — not chiefly through 
the relation of wife and mother, though that, too, 
is of vast importance, but principally and above all, 
I believe, through lier every-day intercourse with 
those about her, as the friend of her chosen inti- 
mates, the companion of her chance associates, and 
the comrade of her fellow workers. The kind of 
influence any college girl exerts is, of course, deter- 
mined in great measure by the kind of woman that 
she is. And the kind of woman that she is depends 
very largely, in these days, upon the social and 
intellectual atmosphere of the college from which 
she has been graduated. All these colleges, it may 



vi Introduction 

at once be said, are religious in their conception 
and tone. People outside the college gates have 
worried a good deal latterly over this matter, but 
their anxiety, it would appear, has been quite un- 
necessary, for the college girl certainly finds relig- 
ious training of some kind, and usually of a very 
good kind, in college. But the sort of social and 
intellectual training she receives depends vastly 
upon the institution. For that reason it has seemed 
to me worth while to study with some care here 
life in the different women's colleges of first rank 
in this country. 

So far as has been possible, — depending as one 
must upon the latest reports made to the Commis- 
sioner of Education (two years back in many cases), 
— the colleges have all been presented in the order 
of their present student enrolment, — with the one 
exception of Simmons College, which has been 
placed at the end because it does not yet give the 
degree, as do the others here chosen for representa- 
tion. 

I have taken for granted in this book the value 
of a college training for girls. If that question has 
not yet been settled, as I believe it has, it is not 
the province of this particular work to settle it. 
Into the debate as to the " unsexing " which may 
come upon American womanhood as a result of 



Introduction vii 

college life, I have chosen, too, not to enter. The 
world in general, I think, has come quite sufficiently 
to the belief of Mr. George Herbert Palmer, pro- 
fessor of philosophy in Harvard University, who 
put himself on record some time ago to the effect 
that if a woman cannot stand a college training it 
speaks pretty badly for her womanly qualities. " I 
have no use," he said, pithily, '' for womanhood that 
won't wash." 

The fact of the matter is that college, far from 
hurting girls, helps them more than people in gen- 
eral have any means of knowing. Old President 
Quincy of Harvard once declared that a man got 
a good deal out of college if he just nibbed his | 
shoulders against the college building. A woman 
may be said to get a good deal out of college even 
if she never gets further than the entrance exam- 
inations. For during those few hours, at least, she 
has had the advantage of standing shoulder to 
shoulder with representative young women of all 
localities, bound together by a common interest, and 
bent upon a common intellectual end. As to the 
girl who has really entered college and lived its 
varied life, all that she gets from her associates 
could not be written in many books the size of this 
one. From the Southern girl, beside whom she 
trains in the gymnasium, she acquires without 



viii Introduction 

knowing it a hint of the angle of vision peculiar 
to that part of our country; from the Westerner, 
who sings next her in the Glee Club, she learns what 
a small thing it is to judge people by their family, 
instead of by character and attainment; from the 
millionaire's daughter she discerns the futility of 
wealth as a covering for vulgarity, and by knowing 
the ambitious New England girl, whose poverty 
makes her only more proud, she comes to regard 
with proper reverence those families of austere life 
and lofty thinking who have been poor country 
ministers for generations, perhaps. In adjusting 
herself to so many types, she grows, perforce, dem- 
ocratic; and it is the most important thing, of all 
important things, in this, our country, that women 
should be democratic. 

Again, the college woman is especially valuable 
to the world as an exponent of culture. The future 
of American culture depends on the women. They 
alone have the leisure for it. And upon the college 
woman who has been laying up stores of intel- 
lectual wealth rests the duty of redeeming the over- 
commercial tone Americans are in danger of ac- 
quiring. The value of the discipline of college, too, 
is a thing which should not be ignored. But more 
important than anything else — perhaps because 
up to the present its importance has been largely 



Introduction ix 

overlooked — is the training- in poise college may 
and should give a girl. The daughter of a me- 
chanic frequently becomes in this country the 
mother of our most distinguished citizen, — not to 
mention her possible relationship to the English 
nobility. College, then, should turn her out '' fit " 
for whatever life shall bring. 

It is, however, to a figure used by Mr. Hamilton 
Wright Mabie, in a graduation address which he 
gave last year, that I must resort to define the par- 
ticular object of this book. Mr. Mabie spoke of 
sitting in a sheltered sunny shipyard, watching the 
men at work upon a great schooner. In that quiet 
spot there was no suggestion of the ocean that lay 
not far beyond, only the sunshine and the blue sky 
and the steady, rhythmic sound of the workmen's 
tools. Yet this was a most important period in the 
ship's life; every nail that was driven home true 
would one day help her out there upon the stormy 
sea to withstand wind and rain. The time would 
come when every stroke deftly dealt now would tell 
tremendously for better or for worse. For this was 
the time of preparation. Because college, too, is a 
time of preparation, conditions there during the 
building of the girl are of importance. Different 
temperaments, different needs, require, of course, 
different things. It is my hope that this volume 



X Introduction 

may, in some cases, at least, assist the fitting of 
the particular temperament to the institution which 
can best help it to sane, sound womanhood. 

It but remains to acknowledge, with gratitude, 
the kindly help generously given me by friends all 
over the country; and particularly to express my 
indebtedness to the publishers of the Century Mag- 
azine, — by whose gracious permission I have been 
enabled to reproduce here portions from their " Fes- 
tivals in Women's Colleges," — to the New England 
Magazine for credited extracts, and to the editors 
of the Outlook, for allowing me here to reprint the 
substance of an article on " New Occupations for 
Educated Women," which I contributed to their 

publication last year. M. c. C 

Charlestown, Massachusetts, /««^, igo4. 



Contents 



♦ 

PAGE 

Introduction • • v 

Smith College i 

Wellesley College 31 

Vassar College 54 

Mt. Holyoke College 71 

Radcliffe College 96 

Bryn Mawr College 118 

Barnard College 130 

The Woman's College of Baltimore . . . 144 

The Randolph - Macon Woman's College . . 1 54 

The Woman's College in Brown University . 163 

Elmira College 170 

Wells College . . 183 

RocKFORD College 194 

Mills College 206 

Simmons College 217 

Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South . 225 

Coeducational Colleges of the West . . 242 

Coeducational Colleges of the East . , . 279 

After College — What 291 

Conclusion 309 

Index 315 



xiv List of Illustrations 



PAGE 



Centre Pavilion, Main Building . . . .148 

A Randolph - Macon Girl 154 

The College Building. — The Gymnasium . .156 

A Brown Girl 163 

Class - day Procession. — Basket - ball Team. — 

The " Komians " 168 

An Elmira Girl 170 

The First Class to Graduate from a Woman's 
College in America. — The First College 

Degree Ever Given a Woman in America . 172 

Basket-ball Team 187 

A Rockford Girl 194 

A Group of Mills Seniors 206 

Basket-ball Team. — A Ride With "Michael, 

THE Faithful" 210 

Simmons College Building 219 

Main Entrance to Newcomb College. — New- 
comb College Chapel 228 

The Pottery Department, Newcomb College. — 

A Painting Class, Newcomb College . . 230 

Golf Links, University of Missouri . . . 232 
A Basket-ball Contest, Hollins Institute. — 

A Coasting Party, Hollins Institute . .235 
Parlour at Mary Baldwin Seminary. — Golf 

Links at Mary Baldwin Seminary . . 236 

A Coeducated Girl of the West .... 242 

Basket-ball Team, University of Nebraska . 254 

A Cooking Class, University of Illinois . . 262 

A Group of Seniors, Kansas State University 268 
Inaugural Procession, Oberlin. — Severance 

Laboratory, Oberlin 274 

A Coeducated Girl of the East . • • . 279 

A Chafing-dish Party, Cornell . • . . 282 

A Wesleyan Girl 289 



The 

College Girl of America 



SMITH COLLEGE 

Few acts possible to humanity are more noble 
than to provide for generations to come privileges 
and rich opportunities for which one has oneself 
longed all through life in vain. The men who have 
founded colleges have usually lacked the culture a 
college course gives, and, from the nature of things, 
no college-bred woman has yet started an institu- 
tion for the higher education of girls. But of the 
women of limited education who have thus served 
young womanhood, no other has left so plain a 
record of her own keen sense of what she missed 
as Sophia Smith, founder of Smith College. To 
her clergyman, the Rev. John M. Greene, D. D., 
who had proposed to her that she bequeath her 
generous fortune to found this woman's college, 



2 The College' Girl of America 

she replied, as she accepted his suggestion : " I 
wish I could have enjoyed the advantages of such 
a college when I was a girl; it would have made 
my life far richer and happier than it has been." 

Yet Sophia Smith was born and reared under 
a fortunate star, and had a satisfactory life — as 
life used to be regarded. Her paternal ancestor in 
the sixth generation was Lieutenant Samuel Smith, 
one of the most prominent of the original settlers 
in Hadley, from whom, it is very interesting to 
know, Mary Lyon, the founder of Mt. Holyoke 
Seminary, now Mt. Holyoke College, also traced 
descent. Hatfield, Miss Smith's lifelong home, was 
noted for its scholars. That it did not itself be- 
come a college town is rather curious, inasmuch as 
all its ambitions tended in that direction. Back 
in Colonial days the citizens of the place even went 
so far as to erect a building which they called 
" Queen's College," and for which the governor, 
Sir Francis Bernard, issued a charter in King 
George's name. But, yielding to the opposition 
strongly brought to bear upon him, Sir Francis 
later cancelled his permission — and Hatfield lost 
its college. Yet when Sophia Smith was born, four 
years before the birth of the wonderful nineteenth 
century, the aspiration for a college had by no means 
died out of the town. 











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BIRTHPLACE OF SOPHIA SMITH, 




CHAPEL AND ENTRANCE TO SMITH COLLEGE. 



Smith College 3 

It was not until this woman had reached the age 
of sixty-five, however, that she really took the first 
decisive step in the matter concerning which she, 
and those about her, had so long been earnestly 
thinking. Her brother Austin had just died, and 
left her a large sum of money, which she neither 
wanted nor knew how to use wisely. She had no 
objects in mind to which she desired to give her 
fortune, but she knew that her own method of life 
would never make great inroads upon it, and that 
a very good sum would, therefore, be available for 
some use when she should die. All this she con- 
fided, on a beautiful May day in 1861, to her pastor, 
whom she had sought out for advice about the 
matter of a will. For hours the two talked in the 
quaint, book-lined parsonage study, and she would 
not go away until Doctor Greene had promised to 
help her carefully to the choice of a proper bene- 
ficiary. 

Accordingly, after several weeks of study and 
research, the good minister matured two plans for 
the disposition of Miss Smith's property. The prin- 
cipal item in one was the founding of a woman's 
college; the chief provision of the other was for 
a deaf-mute institution. There was then no 
woman's college in New England, and not many 
of the leading educators were ready to give young 



4 The College Girl of America 

women educational advantages equal to those pro- 
vided for young men. Yet, when the two plans 
were presented to Miss Smith, after very little de- 
lay, she decided to accept the one which provided 
for the college. The idea pleased her. " She had 
faith in it," Doctor Greene records, " as desirable 
and feasible." 

That she was, however, " but yet a woman " is 
very plain from what followed. Because the out- 
side discouragement was so great, the will of 1861, 
when eventually made, provided for the deaf-mute 
institution instead of for the college. None the 
less, it would appear that Sophia Smith was Heaven- 
ordained to start the project toward which her 
heart yearned. For, six years later, a rich man 
of Northampton having liberally provided for the 
deaf mutes. Miss Smith felt quite at liberty to fol- 
low her own desires. Accordingly, the will was 
changed ; an able body of trustees was chosen, and, 
on July II, 1868, the quiet Hatfield gentlewoman 
became the founder of what is now the largest girls' 
college in the country. 

From the very first Miss Smith understood that 
her college would embody four cardinal principles : 
(i) The educational advantages provided by it 
would be equal to those afforded young men in 
their colleges; (2) Biblical study and Christian 



Smith College 5 

religious culture would be given prominence; (3) 
The cottage system of buildings, or homes for the 
students, instead of one mammoth central building, 
would prevail; (4) Men would have a part in the 
government and instruction in it as well as women, 
" for it is a misfortune for young women or young 
men to be educated wholly by their own kind." 
These four ideas were in Miss Smith's mind, and 
were clearly expressed in the documents connected 
with the founding of the college. 

Of course a scheme so large and broad as this 
one was of small growth. At one time the plan 
even was to have the college in Hatfield, — so long 
kept waiting for such distinction, — but afterward, 
at the suggestion of Mr. Greene, Miss Smith's ever- 
trusted helper in the matter, the site was changed 
to Northampton. To people generally, no word 
was dropped concerning the plan. But in Hatfield, 
as in all small New England towns, curiosity is a 
master passion, and, during the last years of Miss 
Smith's life, the most interesting of all questions 
among the village folk was, " Who will get her 
money?" A silence like that of the sphinx, how- 
ever, brooded over the mystery. Occasionally a 
stranger would come, by stage or carriage, to the 
old tavern near the Smith home, go to the house 
for a few hours, and then steal away as silently 



6 The College Girl of America 

as he came, leaving no name behind. The few vil- 
lage folk who saw these visitors said they looked 
like preachers or lawyers. Nobody thought of them 
as suitors. For, though Miss Smith was not an 
unattractive woman, all felt that her strong and 
reticent life would never be shared by another in 
marriage. 

The life led in Hatfield by this New England 
gentlewoman has been interestingly sketched for us 
by one who knew her well.^ For years Austin 
Smith and a sister Harriet lived with Sophia in the 
substantial old home their father had left them. 
Austin was a shrewd man of business, honest, keen, 
and upright in his dealings. Harriet was kind and 
intelligent. Both sisters, however, were economical 
in their habits, and quiet and reticent, though neigh- 
bourly. They gave for charity and for such relig- 
ious purposes as came within the scope of the Hat- 
field church, where they were constant attendants, 
but they never made large gifts or revealed any 
especial interest in the higher education of women. 
That was Sophia's secret. The sisters were quite 
deaf, and this naturally led them to lives of thought 
and retirement. The village library, not large, but 
of choice books, offered a wide range of study, by 

* Giles B. Stebbins in New England Magazine. 



Smith College 7 

which means their somewhat Hmited education was 
broadened. 

'' About twice a year, however, the Smith sisters 
made a party, inviting some fifty of the young and 
middle-aged. The tall wax candles, the great brass 
andirons, the bright open fires, the solid mahogany 
furniture, the silver tea-service, the old china, the 
fragrant tea, the delicate and perfect home-made 
biscuit and cake of these occasions all gave the 
fortunate visitors a gracious glimpse of old-time 
gentility. Then, once a year, for a long while, the 
three occupants of the house went to Saratoga for 
a few weeks. While there they came so near the 
fashionable world, in equipage and dress, as to say 
by their acts : ' We have a good right to be as 
brave and fine as you are; we can if we choose.' 
Thus they had views of life in these aspects, and 
then dropped back in quiet content to their plain 
village ways." 

Sophia lived longer than either her brother or her 
sister, and it was not until she passed away in 1870, 
at the age of seventy- four, that the secret of her life 
became known. Her estate, appraised at $500,000, 
went almost entirely to the college for which she had 
designed it, and in September, 1871, the first build- 
ing acquired by Smith was purchased at a cost of 
$26,000, and at the same time a committee was 



8 The College Girl of America 

appointed to select a president. The building in 
question was the homestead of Judge Dewey, and 
it is still on the grounds of Smith College. The 
president chosen was Rev. Lauremus Clark Seelye, 
LL. D., and he still holds this office. It was not 
until June 17, 1873, however, that Professor Seelye 
really became the president. He declined the first 
offer, because of the inadequate funds then at the 
disposal of the trustees. 

Very carefully, in the beginning, as ever since, 
Mr. Seelye consulted the best good of the college 
he was to organize. After a survey of existing 
institutions for the higher education of women in 
this country and abroad, and consultation with the 
leading educators of the time, he determined that 
the college should have no preparatory department 
connected with it, and should be on a par intellectu- 
ally with the standard colleges for men. He further 
decided that it should be distinctively a college for 
women, a place where girls should have superior op- 
portunities for developing and perfecting womanly 
characteristics. Hitherto no college for women had 
been started without a preparatory department; 
none had required Greek for entrance ; and in the 
majority of them,, both the quantity and quality of 
the work demanded was little more, and often less, 
than that accomplished in the best secondary schools. 




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Smith College 9 

Even Vassal", the only existing college for women 
worthy of the name, was encumbered with a large 
preparatory department, and had not ordained such 
entrance requirements as obtained in the best col- 
leges for men. 

Probably there could not have been found in the 
length and breadth of the country a man better fitted 
for the development of this college than President 
Seelye. Born in Bethel, Connecticut, September 
20, 1837, he was graduated from Union College 
when scarcely twenty. A period of study at 
Andover and in the universities of Berlin and 
Heidelberg followed; and then he settled down 
— having married Henrietta Sheldon Chapin, of 
Albany, New York — as pastor of the North Con- 
gregational Church, in Springfield, Massachusetts. 
Two years later, however, Mr. Seelye proceeded to 
a chair at Amherst College, where, from 1865 until 
his coming to Smith, he presided over the depart- 
ments of rhetoric and English literature. Birth, 
education, and experience had all combined, it will 
be observed, to make this head of Smith College 
exactly the kind of man the founder would have 
chosen for the place. College Hall, the first aca- 
demic building, was finished and dedicated July 14, 
1875 ; and the president was then formally inaugu- 
rated into the office which he had practically filled 



10 The College Girl of America 

for two years. At a quarter before nine, September 
9, 1875, the college opened at morning prayers with 
four residing teachers and fourteen students. 

It required some strength of purpose for a woman 
to go to college in those days, and the girls who 
went to Smith at its opening were of extraordinary 
mental calibre, as well as the daughters of refined 
homes, where good breeding and high social ideals 
had been dominant. The same thing may be said 
about the girls who go to this college to-day. For 
the trustees have adhered with unwavering fidelity 
to the ideal they set at the beginning, and the high 
standard of scholarship and womanliness with which 
Smith began its life has never been lowered. 

The first thing that impresses the visitor to 
Northampton is the remarkable good looks of the 
Smith College girls, who practically own the town 
from September till the last of June. No particular 
type of beauty can be said to prevail, for the girls 
come, and always have come, from Maine to Cali- 
fornia and Oregon. But one reads on their fine open 
faces that the majority of them are here, not to 
follow a fashion nor to win a livelihood, but 
" to become intelligent women — better qualified for 
whatever time or eternity may bring." The rich and 
the poor are alike welcome, and while it is true that 
many wealthy girls go each year to Smith College, 



Smith College li 

it is likewise true that there are always dozens, not 
to say scores, of girls here who are earning their 
way, and exercising great self-denial for the sake 
of their education. No discrimination has ever been 
made at Smith socially or academically on account 
of money or its lack. There are, of course, expen- 
sive as well as moderate and meagre modes of liv- 
ing, for the college does not oblige a girl to be a 
resident of a dormitory. But none the less it re- 
mains true that Smith is democratic, just as its 
founder desired it should be. Latterly, too, there 
has been a tendency to bring all the students inside 
the college bounds, and to this end a number of 
new and very beautiful dormitories have recently 
been established. Still another noticeable and in- 
teresting change has been the trend from a majority 
of women teachers. About fifty per cent, of the 
faculty are now men. It was perhaps as a return 
compliment that the men among the trustees lately 
voted to admit women to the privileges of the gov- 
erning body. Three alumnae are accordingly mem- 
bers of the Board at the present time. 

At Smith, as at nearly every well-regulated 
woman's college, the health of the students is very 
carefully supervised. Almost all the girls take daily 
exercise, independent of favourable weather condi- 
tions. Long walks and mountain climbs, as well 



12 The College Girl of America 

as boating on near-by Paradise, and early morning 
canters on horseback through the lovely meadows 
of the Connecticut Valley are favourite diversions. 
In gymnastic work and out-of-door games the in- 
terest is likewise keen. Aside from the required 
exercises, there are gymnastic electives for the 
junior and senior classes, and these are notably 
well attended. Yet always at Smith the line is 
drawn on the side of good taste. Consequently, 
there are no intercollegiate athletic contests here. 
" Valuable as such contests may be for men," Pres- 
ident Seelye has said, " they do not seem suitable 
for women, and no benefit is likely to come from 
them which would justify the risks." 

In its well-equipped gymnasium, however, class 
contests in basket-ball and other games are greatly 
enjoyed by the students. Hockey, too, first intro- 
duced into American colleges by Miss Constance 
Applebee, of England, has been very cordially re- 
ceived at Smith, and there is no pleasanter sight 
to be met with on the campus than that of two 
rival hockey teams, striving with all the strength 
and skill they can command to make their difficult 
goals. 

There was a time when Smith College girls 
played baseball, after supper, in trained dresses, but 
this was before the days when basket-ball was 





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Smith College 13 

adopted. Now there is no college where this new 
and splendidly scientific sport for women is pursued 
more intelligently than at Smith. The enthusiasm 
culminates at the end of the winter term with the 
contest between the two lower class teams. Al- 
though the second class, with its year more of prac- 
tice, generally wins on this occasion, it is never safe 
to predict; and the audience which fills the running 
track of the gymnasium is always as full of interest 
and gay-coloured excitement as cheers and banners 
can express. The line-up, before this game, is 
one of the characteristic things at Smith, fanciful 
legends and curious banners being prominently dis- 
played by both sides,, as they patiently await, for 
hours, entrance to the scene of the contest. Once 
in, the game is to see which class shall get its mas- 
cot first on the floor. 

Similar enthusiasm is manifested over the tennis 
tournament held every spring. This event calls out 
friends from far and near, the back campus blos- 
soms with ribbons and gay gowns, and a general 
good time is always enjoyed. Each class has its 
champions, and these play scientifically and well. 
Moreover, the visitor rather enjoys being waved 
back into place by the coloured wand of a girl- 
beadle; and the rows of bright faces and flaring 
flags against the background of river and hills 



14 The College Girl of America 

seldom fail to impress. At the apple-tree entrance 
twenty-five cents a head is demanded, the proceeds 
going to the treasury of the Athletic Association, 
a carefully governed body, which has a friendly 
oversight over the boating on Paradise, the tramp- 
ing and running and general athletic sports of the 
college. 

Every October, Smith has its Mountain Day, 
especially set apart that the students of the college 
may become very familiar in the course of their 
four years at Northampton with the famous beauty 
of that part of the Connecticut Valley. Tramps to 
Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Whately Glen, and Sugar Loaf 
are also indulged in as the months roll by, some 
groups of undergraduate enthusiasts often walking 
twenty miles in an afternoon. 

The college year at Smith opens with an im- 
promptu dance known as the Freshman Frolic. 
Then, in October, comes the reception given by the 
sophomores to welcome the entering class, — and 
incidentally to express womanly scorn of hazing. 
The new girl is escorted to this freshman festivity 
by an upper class partner, who, in addition to filling 
out her dancing-card and sending her flowers, sees 
that she meets the right person for each dance, 
entertains her during refreshments, and " sees her 
home." The seriousness with which the whole 



Smith College 15 

affair is taken is almost comic. For the invitations 
are daintily engraved, and the girls " asked out " 
dress with the greatest possible care. The escort- 
ing sophomore, on the other hand, is scrupulously 
polite throughout the evening, obviously realizing 
the grave responsibility of her office. A dance of 
the same sort is given later by the juniors, as a 
farewell to the senior class. 

The scientific teas at Smith are immensely amus- 
ing and original. " Perhaps the card has read, ' A 
Chemico-physic Afternoon.' When one goes, one 
finds Lily Hall transformed by flowers. The ush- 
ers' wands are glass rods tied with ribbon; coffee 
and lemonade, filtered into Florence flasks, are 
served in beakers, and drunk through glass tubes; 
wafers are passed in crystallizing dishes. In the 
hall a white-frocked girl may be seen drawing a 
wedding-march from a harp of wooden reeds. Elec- 
tricity, meanwhile, does * stunts ' in the dark- 
room." ^ 

Another highly important annual affair at Smith 
is the Junior Prom, now held each year in the 
Students' Building, especially decorated for the oc- 
casion. During the afternoon of Prom Day, a con- 
cert is given on the back campus by the glee, banjo, 

* Harriett C. Seelye in Century Magazine. 



i6 The College Girl of America 

and mandolin clubs. But the dancing of the even- 
ing is the thing, — that and the driving next day, 
with one's " Prom man." Every horse within five 
miles of Northampton is booked months ahead for 
these day-after-prom drives. 

The high-water mark of social diversion is 
reached, however, in the senior dramatics which, 
each spring, usher in the college's Commencement 
festivities. For years it has been the custom to 
present a Shakespearian play at this time under the 
direction of a member of the faculty and of a pro- 
fessional coach. These plays have been given at the 
Academy of Music, Northampton, with every possi- 
ble theatrical advantage in the way of scenery and 
make-up. The costumes are usually designed by a 
member of the class, and for the colour scheme and 
scenery another senior is ordinarily responsible. 
After this elaborate fashion, valuable from the 
intellectual as well as the dramatic viewpoint, 
"Midsummer Night's Dream" was given in 1895; 
"As You Like It" in 1896; "Merchant of Ven- 
ice" in 1897; "Much Ado About Nothing" in 
1898; "Winter's Tale" in 1899; "Twelfth 
Night" in 1900; "The Taming of the Shrew" 
in 1901 ; and "Romeo and Juliet" in 1902; and 
" Love's Labour's Lost " in 1903. 

The earnest spirit and serious effort that go into 



Smith College 17 

these senior dramatics have never failed to produce 
imposing results. In last year's play not a little skill 
was shown in making the text fit our own times. 
Without discarding anything of the original, the 
satire was made to possess universal human appli- 
cation. The scenes were given practically in the 
order of the folio text, with suitable cuts, — the 
death of the father of the princess being retained, 
however. A very beautiful pageant at the close of 
the last act lent to the performance the charm 
Smith girls so well understand how to impart to 
their theatricals. For then Spring and Winter came 
on in chariots drawn by four graceful maidens clad 
consistently with the seasons. And while all the 
characters — soldiers, musicians, and so on — were 
grouped on the stage, Miss Frances McCarroll, of 
Brooklyn, New York, as Spring, and Miss Alice 
Butterfield, of Brattleboro, Vermont, as Winter, 
recited the charmmg lines which, so long as English 
literature survives, will stand as the most beautiful 
poetic characterizations of these seasons. How 
those hundreds of daintily-gowned girls in the audi- 
ence applauded the lines celebrating the month — 

" When daisies pied and violets blue 
And lady-smocks all silver white 
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue 
Do paint the meadows with delight ! " 



i8 The College Girl of America 

an exact description, as they one and all recognized, 
of the fields about Northampton at that very time. 

The senior play is the very biggest feature of 
a senior year, and the most noticeable of all Smith 
events to an outsider. To the girls themselves these 
theatricals are likewise of immense interest and im- 
portance, not only because of the careful training 
in voice culture, easy bearings and intelligent ap- 
preciation of Shakespeare they entail, but also be- 
cause of the delightful comradeship that must result 
from week after week of the necessary rehearsal. 

For the spring of 1904 a very interesting depar- 
ture was taken, for, instead of a Shakespearian 
play, the Hindoo drama '' Sakuntala," by Kalidasa, 
was given. This work, never before given on the 
American stage, is the masterpiece of India, and 
ranks high in the literature of all countries. It was 
first translated from the Sanskrit in 1791, and soon 
after was produced in Germany. It has been given 
once In England, and is being widely discussed at 
the present time by dramatic critics all over this 
country. The acting version, used at Northampton, 
was made by Miss Alice Morgan Wright, a senior, 
after carefully studying existing translations, and 
deciding that none of them would do. Smith girls, 
you see, accomplish things themselves when put to 
it. Last spring they erected upon the lower campus 




o 

u 

o 

as 
> 

w 
o 
z 

§ 

o 



Smith College 19 

a students' building which cost about $38,000. 
And for the house-warming — and to swell the 
fund — two of the largest societies of the college, 
the Alpha and the Phi Kappa Psi, presented '' She 
Stoops to Conquer." In this building are club- 
rooms and the editorial quarters of the Smith Col- 
lege Monthly, the excellent literary and news mag- 
azine of the college. 

Just here, because it gives a fair idea of the qual- 
ity of this magazine, as well as because it shows 
the admirable good sense of the representative 
Smith College girl, I want to quote a paragraph 
from an article contributed to the Monthly of May, 
1903, by Fannie Stearns Davis, Smith, 1904. The 
contribution is called " Against the Flirtatious Short 
Story," and begins : " I desire to condemn the 
average sketch of a love-story produced by the 
average college girl. I desire to condemn those 
clever shapes of literary whipped creami and spun 
silk that represent the literary kisses of the college 
love-tales. ... I desire to condemn such love- 
stories from clever beginning to inevitable ending, 
for three very excellent but possibly personal rea- 
sons : first, because they bore me ; second, because 
I believe them to be perfectly untrue to a reasonable 
sort of life ; third, because, after due consideration, 
I cannot arrive at a sight of any benefit done by 



20 The College Girl of America 

them to the person who spins the shiny cobweb of 
them, or to the one who tumbles through the thin- 
ness of them. . . . Why should a girl cheapen her 
self-respect by writing of the ignoble sides of things 
when the noble is perfectly attainable ? To demand 
solidity and sobriety of every smallest written word 
were a demand for a continual church attendance, 
and as unreasonable as that; but to ask for a thing 
not utterly transient, not threadbare of human truth^ 
not extolling what should be scorned; to ask an 
underlying nobility of motive in any imagination 
of the mind which is given any fixed abiding-place 
by means of ink and paper, is not too much tO' re- 
quire of the youngest and most merrily irresponsi- 
ble of human creatures." 

Now it is just that sincerity for which this under- 
graduate here earnestly pleads which seems to me 
to characterize the Smith College girl generally. 
My friend, Miss Elizabeth McCracken, in writing 
of this trait, has called it " sweet gravity." A 
stimulating sense that the college girl may and 
should do something fine with her life seems ever 
present in the minds of the girls here. This may 
very well be the result of the high Christian spirit 
in which the college was conceived and in which 
it has always been conducted. Attendance at chapel 
is by no means compulsory at Smith, but every 



Smith College 21 

morning the large hall is well filled with worship- 
pers, and no visitor who has been privileged to 
share in the uplift of Sunday vespers ever forgets 
the experience. Wearing their best clothes and 
shining Sunday faces, the girls come to this service 
in groups of twos and threes, after an afternoon 
of writing home, and they listen to the exhortations 
of the president, and join in the singing of the 
hymns with an earnest reverence distinctly impres- 
sive. The Christian Association has a secretary of 
its own here at Smith, and in a quiet way much 
active Christian work is done during the years of 
a college course, — so much indeed that about 
twenty per cent, of the girls who may have entered 
college without definite Christian affiliations express 
themselves upon leaving as decidedly interested in 
one or another of the church bodies in Northampton. 
A very important department at Smith is the 
Students' Aid Society, which has now been estab- 
lished for over five years, and is of constantly in- 
creasing service to those who lack the means to 
continue their education. This society offers loans 
without interest to needy and worthy students of 
the three upper classes, allowing them three to five 
years for the payment. By means of its good of^ces 
many a girl, who must otherwise have left college, 
has been enabled to stay on and complete her edu- 



22 The College Girl of America 

cation. There are more scholarships, too, at Smith 
than at many colleges of equal standing. Last year 
about seventy-five hundred dollars in sums of fifty 
dollars was available for help in this direction. Of 
Smith's fine buildings pages might easily be written. 
With its mtusic-hall, its art-gallery, its observatory, 
its plant house, its alumnae gymnasium (with swim- 
ming tank), and its fine library, it has, of course, 
every equipment for a modern and complete educa- 
tion. Its tuition, too, is low, — only one hundred 
dollars, — while the charge for board and a fur- 
nished room in any one of the fifteen or so college 
houses is but three hundred dollars a year. And 
even the rich girls, it is worth while to note, live 
in these three-hundred-a-year cottage homes. 

Not long ago a very handsome building, named 
Plymouth Hall, was erected just outside the campus. 
It was — and is — a pile of masonry as far as pos- 
sible removed in spirit from its good old Puritan 
name. " It conveys the impression,'' as a bright 
girl has said, " of having wandered to Northampton 
from New York's Fifth Avenue or Boston's Back 
Bay." It has to recommend it, however, all the 
modem conveniences, from steam heat and electric 
lights to an elevator presided over by a boy in 
buttons. There is even a tradition that the girls 
living here always wear evening gowns for dinner! 



Smith College 23 

But Plymouth Hall is not succeeding as its promot- 
ers believed it would. The girls who could afford 
to live here soon came to realize that for all this 
paraphernalia of hotel existence they would b€ sac- 
rificing something very much more precious. And 
since no college girl wishes to get out of touch with 
the democratic spirit for which American colleges 
stand, Plymouth Hall bids fair to become an awk- 
ward white elephant on the hands of Northampton 
real estate men. The real Smith dormitories are 
wonderfully attractive and homelike, presenting 
more the appearance of a group of well-kept dwell- 
ings than of a seat of learning. 

The actual flavour of the place one can taste only 
by repeated visits to Northampton. Here we find 
the unique spectacle of a college woman's town. 
Smith has given to its students large personal lib- 
erty, and Northampton fully appreciates the reflex 
privilege this implies. On all sides, therefore, it 
makes ingenuous bids for student patronage. Even 
the upholsterer near the campus drops into poetry. 
As witness : 

" Halt ! you maidens, and attention bestow 
To this little shop of mine. 
If ever you find your furniture cracked, 
Or if you've got any that'll have to be packed, 
Why ! that is right in my line." 



24 The College Girl of America 

A Smith girl might do ahnost anything in North- 
ampton, and the townspeople would smile indul- 
gently; but as a matter of fact she never does do 
anything in the least inconsiderate or discourteous 
or overbearing. Wearing a pretty white gown — 
even in winter — she comes often in the early 
evening to enjoy the good things one of the leading 
restaurants provides for her and for her sisters ; but 
she is never unpleasantly pervasive, even at Boy- 
den's. Not only does it seem to be true at North- 
ampton that a Smith girl can do no wrong, but 
also that a Smith girl does do no wrong. She 
enjoys the finest kind of liberty because she has 
shown that she knows how to enjoy it. 

In the same way there is at Smith nothing of 
the traditional antagonism between the students and 
their teachers. At the Academy of Music one even- 
ing this spring, I looked very hard and long at a 
body of Smith girls, to discover which of the group 
could be the chaperon. I did not find her. But I 
know she was there. In dress and bearing she was, 
however, just one of the girls for the time being, 
enjoying the play, as they were, with simple, de- 
lightful, well-bred enthusiasm. Smith's women in- 
structors are all like that, which may in a way 
account — don't you think? — for the fine, sane 
womanliness of the Smith girl. 



Smith College 25 

No one ever accused a Smith girl of being dull, 
however. She, of all persons, knows thoroughly 
how to have a good time while living her under- 
graduate life. Naturally there are as many kinds 
of good times as there are girls. The Smith stu- 
dent may take part in bazaars, tableaux, and plays 
for churches and city charities ; she may do regular 
work in the Home Culture clubs (founded by 
George W. Cable) ; she may sing to forlorn old 
women in hospitals ; visit her friends in near-by 
towns; witness a performance by Nance O'Neil, 
Irving, the Ben Greet Company, or Mrs^^ Fiske, at 
the Academy; watch the football struggle between 
Harvard and Yale ; attend junior " proms " at 
neighbouring colleges; or just stay inside the 
Smith campus and study — as she pleases. 

Or she may work almost all night for the sake of 
attending college by day. One girl is noted for the 
stylish shirt-waists she makes; another for her 
clever newspaper articles. Many, very many, take 
excellent pictures, which they sell to their fellow 
students at astonishingly low prices ; two of whom 
I know teach dancing classes. One student has, 
throughout her course, earned her travelling ex- 
penses, and fat checks besides, by acting as the 
agent of a certain Western railroad, when Easter 
and Christmas vacations are being planned. What- 



26 The College Girl of America 

ever honest means a college girl may adopt to help 
her to bear student expenses, she will not cease on 
that account to be respected by her college mates. 

A recent writer in one of the Chicago papers has 
spoken at some length of the " ignominy " suffered 
by a girl of limited means at college. If what the 
writer says were true, it would indicate a change 
for the worse in women's colleges within the past 
few years, — a change, however, which I feel sure 
has not come about. Says the article in question: 

"' The woman who would win her own way 
through college has something more to contend with 
than a man. First, she has the ignominy of it to 
suffer. Yes, the ignominy and the shame. For nine 
women out of ten in a college community, with loose 
purse-strings, look down with an air of contemptible 
patronage on her who has no purse-strings at all. 
Her plain clothes, her indefatigable industry, her 
poverty, all tend to ostracize her from the so-called 
* smart ' set, and to set her apart with only one 
or two friends, or no friends at all. She is not 
asked to join the fashionable clubs; she is never 
permitted to lead; she is rarely elected to office; 
she is looked upon as a nonentity, without position 
or prestige." 

It is, of course, barely possible that in the demo- 
cratic West " ignominy " must be endured by the 



Smith College 27 

college girl of small means. Where fortunes are 
made in an hour, and a girl whose father was last 
year behind the counter in his own small shop, to- 
day flaunts an automobile and is styled a merchant 
prince, snobbery must be expected. In our Eastern 
colleges, however, quite a different spirit exists. 
Poverty of genial friendliness, poverty of warm- 
heartedness, poverty of brains, may be condemned, 
— pecuniary poverty, never. 

That nine women out of every ten in a college 
community with loose purse-strings look down with 
an air of contemptible patronage on her who has 
no purse-strings at all is utterly absurd. In the 
first place the " nine out of every ten " have them- 
selves " no purse-strings at all." Rich girls do not 
yet go to college in any great numbers, and the 
few who do show by the mere fact of their being 
there that better things than purse-strings or a lack 
of them are their concern. Smith is almost the 
only college w^here girls of large means are to be 
found at all, and the sweetness and generosity which 
is the attitude of mind of these girls toward those 
who are poorer than themselves is notorious. Very 
many actual cases could be pointed out where rich 
girls have quietly and unostentatiously given pe- 
cuniary aid to their fellow students of small means. 

" The so-called ' smart ' set ! " Let those who 



28 The College Girl of America 

would bring that phrase into the vocabulary of 
college life be covered with confusion. Is it not 
bad enough to have a '' smart set " staring one 
impudently in the face from every page of modern 
journalism and from the ubiquitous '* society novel," 
without dragging it in where it has no right to 
exist and does not exist? " Plain clothes," we ven- 
ture to assert, never yet, in a New England college, 
ostracized a girl. As for " indefatigable industry ! " 
Well, — " that's another story," as Kipling would 
say. 

The " grind " is not popular among the girls of 
any college set, and since like seeks like, her friends 
are ordinarily " grinds " like herself, — creatures 
apart from any set. More and more every year 
are girls coming to realize that Newman's " Idea 
of a University " is the right one. The scholarly 
cardinal, it will be remembered, strenuously opposed 
the notion that a university is a professional school, 
and vigorously maintained that it should always be 
held a training-school for the development of the 
all-around student. When girls began to go to col- 
lege, they went very largely with a definite idea of 
fitting for the profession of teacher. This is not 
yet changed so much as it should be, but it is, never- 
theless, modified in some measure, so that nowadays 
there are comparatively few girls who graduate 



Smith College 29 

from college without a considerable development 
in the way of intellectual breadth. Yet in any 
college having a share of the elective system, it will 
readily be seen that an omnivorous devourer of 
Greek, for instance, could pursue her thirst for 
abnormal development in that direction unhindered. 
She would desire to study, and she would be allowed 
to study. A " grind " is not very interesting, so- 
cially, and she generally is let alone. Not, how- 
ever, because she is poor would this come about. 
A rich " grind " is an anomaly, but not an impossi- 
bility. Poor " grinds " do not care for society, and 
society does not care for them. 

The one sin which college girls do not pardon 
is stupidity. By this is meant not simply a lack of 
pronounced brilliancy in scholarship, — many very 
popular girls, both rich and poor, have that, — but 
a lack of all the qualities which go to make up an 
interesting personality. A poor girl may be clever 
at theatricals, a pleasing singer, a brilliant student, 
an original talker, a fascinating beauty, or only a 
lovable, womanly young woman, and have friends 
galore, invitations galore, and hold office, too, in 
leading clubs. 

But just as exception has been taken to the 
phrase " smart set," I would protest against the 
use of the adjective " fashionable," in connection 



30 The College Girl of America 

with a college club. Similarity of intellectual inter- 
ests, social interests, or human interests is the only 
reason for the existence of college clubs. When the 
snobbery of the society world exercises any potent 
influence upon the life of college girls, it will be 
time enough to talk of the ignominy of poverty. 
Such a day has not yet come, and, let us hope, it 
never will. The college girl who works her way 
through her alma mater always receives the respect 
due her from her better-conditioned sisters. If she 
has a personality which in outside life would win 
her social position and the affection of friends, she 
is, of course, popular in college — even in Smith 
College. 



i 




A WELLESLEV GIRL. 



WELLESLEY COLLEGE 

Wellesley, the " College Beautiful," is the ex- 
quisite product of a poet's lovely thought. To say 
that Wellesley is a poem were hardly to put the 
thing too strongly, founded as the institution was, 
in memory of a poet's dead child, as testimony to 
a poet's faith in a kind and gracious God. 

Just fifty years ago Henry Welles Smith, a rising 
young lawyer of Boston, — who was later to take 
the name of Henry Fowle Durant, because he was 
being constantly confounded with a neighbouring 
business man who bore his own name, — married 
Pauline Fowle, his cousin, and the daughter of a 
gallant soldier. The young couple lived for a time 
in Boston, but the year after their marriage pur- 
chased the Wellesley estate. Here, in a rambling 
farmhouse, it was the Durants' custom to spend 
the summers enjoying the delights of country life. 
And here, in 1855, their child was bom, a lovely 
boy, who was the pride and delight of both. 

Yet it was not ordained that this Henry Durant 
should grow to manhood, for when he was but eight 

31 



32 The College Girl of America 

he slipped away under a trying illness. While his 
little boy was hovering between life and death, and 
he did not yet know what would be the issue of the 
illness, the clever lawyer, his father, saw clearly 
that he had a duty to God which he had never fully 
discharged, and he resolved, whether his son were 
spared or not, to devote himself and all his posses- 
sions to the highest ends. The little heir was taken 
away, but in the keenness of his sorrow, Henry 
Durant accepted the loss in the higher sense of 
discipline and determined tO' put into a consecrated 
life the same earnestness which he had hitherto 
put into a worldly one. 

The secret of Mr. Durant's success at the bar 
had been a certain intensity which enabled him 
to influence others by giving his whole strength 
to any case he had undertaken. This intensity now 
spent itself in a different direction. It was devoted 
to the service of Christ. He became a lay preacher, 
and laboured the rest of his life to win to a religious 
state many who had been heretofore careless and 
indifferent toward heavenly things. 

How ardently his wife must have shared in the 
new interest that had come into his life can be 
appreciated more fully after we have traced some^ 
what the family of this surviving founder of 
Wellesley College. Her mother's family bore the 



Wellesley College 33 

name of De Cazenove, honourably known in France 
for nearly one thousand years previous to the 
Huguenot persecution. Their rank was that of 
marquis, but when the men of the family emigrated 
to Geneva for religious liberty, and determined to 
enter upon a business career, they thought it fitting 
to drop titles. In the little republic of Geneva (then 
not one of the cantons of Switzerland) the Caze- 
noves soon distinguished themselves by their pro- 
bity, intelligence, and refinement, no less than by 
reason of their acuteness in the business of finance, 
which they elected to follow. But religious and 
political feeling ran high, and during the Jacobin 
revolution Mrs. Durant's grandfather was seized 
by the mob and thrown into prison. As soon as 
he was recognized, however, he was permitted by 
the revolutionary tribunal tO' return to his family, 
and two nights afterward, by the advice of his 
father, he and his brother made their escape from 
the country and emigrated for America by way 
of Hamburg. 

These gallant young Frenchmen landed in Phila- 
delphia in November, 1794. Here they soon met 
two beautiful sisters, whom they married. The 
lady who was to become Mrs. Durant's grandmother 
seems to have been possessed of remarkable learning 
and culture for her time, for she was a Latin and 



34 The College Girl of America 

French scholar of parts. Her husband rapidly 
attained marked success in business. Associating 
himself with some gentlemen of kindred interests, 
he purchased a tract of land at the mouth of 
George's Creek, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, 
where the partners founded the town of New 
Geneva, established stores, built mills, and set up 
glass-works. John Jacob Astor, perceiving young 
Cazenove's remarkable business ability, offered him 
a partnership in his great fur venture, but this the 
youth refused, preferring to try his fortunes in a 
shipping concern, for which purpose he removed to 
Alexandria, Virginia. 

Five sons and five daughters came in the course 
of years to the Cazenove household, and one of these, 
Pauline, while on a visit to Boston in the autumn 
of 1826, met Major Fowle of Watertown, at that 
time in the regular United States army. 

The Fowles of Watertown were of English 
descent, and as interesting a family in their own 
way as even the Cazenoves. The father. Captain 
John, had done good service in the war of the revo- 
lution, and he and his wife were reputed at the 
time of their marriage to be the handsomest bride 
and groom Newton had ever known. Their eight 
children, especially the daughters, were far-famed 
for their loveliness, and it is said that when the girls 



Wellesley College 35 

were sewing or reading by the window at early- 
even their father would frequently steal out to 
shield his Three Graces from the glances of the 
youths of the place. 

Robert Treat Paine, apropos of these beauteous 
maids, composed a toast that was long famed in the 
countryside : 

" To the fair of every town 
And the Fowle of Watertown," 

and this was wont to be drunk reverently, all stand- 
ing, by the gallants of the period. 

Harriet, the most intellectual of these maids, 
married a young lawyer by the name of Smith, and 
went with her husband to live in Hanover, N. H. ; 
it was here, Feb. 20, 1822, that she gave birth to the 
child who was afterward to found Wellesley College, 
Henry Welles Smith, who changed his name to 
Henry Fowle Durant because his own patronymic 
was annoyingly like that of another man. 

The brother of the Three Graces, the soldier who 
won Pauline Cazenove as his bride, was not in his 
first youth at the time of this wedding, having 
reached indeed twoscore years when he met his 
beloved. He had served in the war of 18 12 in New 
York, and had taken part with that illustrious corps 
known as Scott's brigade in the Niagara campaign, 



36 The College Girl of America 

remaining at the head of his company through the 
battle of Lundy's Lane, regardless of the wound 
he had received early in the action. Later he served 
in the Indian wars on the frontier. 

Major Fowle was a man of the greatest integrity, 
and was nicknamed Honest Jack in his regiment. 
So fine and high was his sense of responsibility for 
others that he abandoned card playing (which at 
home had been a favourite recreation of the family 
circle) because he had noticed the demoralizing 
effect of this practice on his men. 

As a lover, the major seems to have been ideal. 
A sister of his betrothed called him " the most 
thoughtful and considerate man for one in love I 
ever knew." And her friends agreed that " since 
the creation of the world no lover was ever half so 
attentive and agreeable as the major." 

The union of the major and his bride was cele- 
brated in May, 1831, and on June 13th of the follow- 
ing year, Pauline Fowle (Mrs. Durant) was born 
in Alexandria. Even while an infant she journeyed 
much with her parents from one army post to an- 
other. In the spring of 1833, we learn. Major 
Fowle was ordered to Fort Dearborn, Chicago, and 
from his evangelistic efforts in a not inappropriate 
carpenter shop there sprang what was afterward 
the first church in Chicago. An appointment as 



Wellesley College 37 

instructor of tactics and as commandant of the corps 
of cadets at West Point soon followed, and in the 
fascinating army life of this military academy on the 
Hudson little Pauline passed five years of her early 
childhood. 

The little girl was early trained in all womanly 
arts, and when her father was promoted to the rank 
of lieutenant-colonel and ordered to the command of 
his regiment in the Seminole Indian wars, he car- 
ried with him a pretty hussy, laboriously fashioned 
by his daughter's childish fingers. This gift was 
the last one he ever received from Pauline. For, 
having placed his family temporarily in Alexandria, 
he embarked at Wheeling, Virginia, on the steam- 
boat Moselle, on which he lost his life April 25, 
1838. The boat had been urged beyond her power, 
and at Cincinnati the boiler burst. In the river near 
Madison, Indiana, one hundred miles down-stream, 
the soldier's body was recovered May 13, 1838, and 
there he was buried with the honours of war. In 
remembrance of this, Mrs. Durant, a few years ago, 
gave the town a check of $5,000 for the benefit of the 
King's Daughters Hospital, now doing a very 
valuable service in that community. Naturally, the 
blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Fowle. Pauline, 
then only a child of six, was forced to attend to 
nearly everything, for her mother was utterly pros- 



38 The College Girl of America 

trated by the shock of her husband's loss. The little 
girl was only eight years old when she first met her 
cousin Henry, then a student in Harvard. But she 
soon grew up, and while he was attending the law 
school, being admitted to the bar, and making his 
way as a young attorney, she was being carefully 
educated for the place she was later to fill so splen- 
didly. 

As has been said, young Durant was a poet. Dur- 
ing his courtship he penned many lines which 
showed his skill as a rhymester. Wellesley College 
was, however, to be the epic of his life. He had 
made a fortune in the law, and this he wished to 
surrender as a gift to God. From 1863 onward, 
therefore, he was considering how best it could be 
done. Finally, the thought took shape. " Wouldn't 
you like to consecrate these Wellesley grounds, this 
place that was to have been Harry's, to some special 
work for God?" he asked his wife, one day, and, 
receiving her joyful affirmative, the planning for 
Wellesley was begun. In a letter written to her in 
1867, he said : " The great object we have in view 
is the appropriation and consecration of our country- 
place and other property to the service of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, by erecting a seminary." 

In September, 1875, the original Wellesley build- 
ings, erected at a cost of $1,000,000, were opened 



Wellesley College 39 

by the Durants in their beautiful park of three hun- 
dred acres, on the shore of Lake Waban. Years 
before, it is interesting here to note, a famous Boston 
physician, who had instituted careful research to 
ascertain the most healthful town in Massachusetts, 
decided in favour of Wellesley. 

When the main building was erected it was 
thought to be absurdly large, because it offered 
accommodations for three hundred students. Now 
there are nine hundred and seventy-eight girls in 
the college, with fourteen professors, twenty-three 
assistant professors, and fifty-four instructors. And 
from the main building with which the college 
started has sprung the large group of buildings now 
scattered about what was originally the Durant Park. 
Eleven dormitories — three halls and eight cottages 
— are this year in use, besides the recently erected 
Noanett House in the village, rented by the college 
for a student home, and the Wellesley Inn, incor- 
porated and conducted by Wellesley graduates, 
which likewise has its little family of students. All 
the cottages on the grounds are connected with 
College Hall by a telephone system, and nearly all 
are heated from the fine new heating plant for which 
Mr. Rockefeller contributed $150,000. Mention 
might as well be made here of the extremely low 
price of board and tuition at this institution. For 



40 The College Girl of America 

the former two hundred and twenty-five dollars a 
year, and for the latter one hundred and seventy- 
five dollars is required. This prevails whether a 
girl lives in College Hall, as the majority of fresh- 
men do, or in one of the charming co.ttages, the 
cherished homes of upper class girls. 

College Hall, with its palm-filled rotunda, has 
been compared to an immense hotel. Three hun- 
dred people can be accommodated here, and there is 
a telegraph and telephone office, a book store, a 
library, and a natural history museum, as well as 
many executive offices under its huge roof, which, 
from end to end, covers an eighth of a mile. Noan- 
ett House, the latest of the dormitories, is named 
after the Indian king who was the friend of John 
Eliot, and is the second cottage to recognize in its 
distinctive title early American history. The first 
was Norumbega, so named in honour of Professor 
Horsford's historical city. 

The opening of Norumbega was very interesting, 
for Miss Freeman (the late Mrs. Alice Freeman 
Palmer), who was then president of the college, had 
asked the poet Whittier to be present on that occa- 
sion. In reply he sent a letter, now framed and 
hanging over the mantel of this charming students' 
home, enclosing the following poem entitled " Nor- 
umbega " : 




CO 

C 
Q 

?Q 
W 

a 
w 

-J 
o 
u 

>-] 

1/3 

A 



Wellesley College 41 

« Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires 
Of the sought city rose, nor yet beside 
The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide 

Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires 

The vision tarried ; but somewhere we knew 
The beautiful gates must open to our quest, 
Somewhere that wondrous city of the West 

Would lift its towers and palace domes in view; 

And lo ! at last its mystery is made known, 
Its only dwellers maidens fair and young, 
Its princess such as England's laureate sung; 

And safe from capture, save by love alone. 
It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore 
And Norumbega is a myth no more." 



One of the first questions asked by people who 
are interested in the student Hfe of girls at any col- 
lege is, ''How are the young women governed? 
How much liberty do they have?" At Wellesley 
this query might be answered by saying that the girls 
are subjected only to such rules as would naturally 
govern the action of any well-bred girl. A student 
does not, of course, come to town in the evening, 
or go anywhere else where a chaperon would be 
required, without having some older person with her. 
But she can ask her friends out to Wellesley tO' play 
golf or tennis, or go boating, and she does it, too, 
whenever her studies and the general scheme of 
things make it possible. Very largely, nowadays, 
the students of Wellesley College are self-governing 



42 The College Girl of America 

by virtue of an " agreement between the faculty and 
students," in which certain matters of every-day 
conduct are relegated entirely to the control of the 
girls themselves. 

It is, of course, by a college's graduates that its 
work is best known, and by them alone can it be 
fairly judged. Thus the quality of Wellesley Col- 
lege training may perhaps be best hinted at by citing 
two instances — not wholly apocryphal — of girls 
who needed its blessings. 

The stories I am about to relate were told me by a 
friend, who is not herself a college woman, in reply 
to a chance observation of mine that the best college 
is the one which a girl can attend without leaving 
home. 

" That may be true sometimes," my friend in- 
stantly replied. '^ But there are cases, many of them 
in America, where a mother does her whole duty to 
her child only when she sends her quite away from 
home. If the girl has been accustomed to luxury, the 
college life teaches the difference between real worth 
and mere ostentation. And if she has lacked at 
home the amenities many very good homes are 
wholly without, she will learn at college how tO' bear 
herself gently. What if the acquirement of better 
manners and higher home ideals on the part of the 
girl does make it hard for her to adjust herself, 




o 
o 

OS 

h- 1 

a 
>< 



Wellesley College 43 

when she comes back from her college life, and does 
create a breach between her mother and herself. 
There has got to be such a breach, hasn't there, in a 
country like this one, where the daughter of a shop- 
keeper in a small way may grace the White House — 
or the English peerage? 

" I was very forcibly struck, a few years ago," 
my friend went on, earnestly, " with the change 
Wellesley may work in three months in a girl's man- 
ners. We'll call the girl I am to tell you of Florence 
Gray, because that isn't in the least like her name. 
I myself prepared her for college. She had a good 
mind, but the worst manners I ever saw in any 
maiden of her years. She used to dine with me some- 
times. Such occasions were, however, so painful to 
my family that I really could not ask her often. She 
was horribly noisy, voraciously hungry, — a thing 
all waist and elbows and giggles. 

" But that was before she went to college. When 
she came home for her first Christmas vacation, 
she was so changed that I scarcely could believe 
my eyes ! Her voice was quiet, her manners deferen- 
tial, her elbows at her sides instead of on the table, 
and she had learned that a lady does not display, 
even if she possesses, the appetite of a tramp. I was 
proud of her metamorphosis, I can tell you. Now 
I'll grant that another girl might have gotten all 



44 The College Girl of America 

this by observation, or as you please. But this girl 
would never have gotten it without college, for 
her home had lacked refinement, and she, being she, 
was incapable of picking it up easily, as a result of 
occasional visits to people who make a change in 
their dress for dinner, and eat their soup noiselessly. 
But intimate contact with good manners three times 
a day for three months, at a formative period of her 
life, served to rescue her from her heritage of vul- 
garity. 

" The second girl fell under my observation the 
same year. Her mother was a school friend of my 
own, her father a clever professional man, who had 
attained local success. Neither of the parents had 
ever gone much into society in a large city, and so 
were accustomed to the rather low tone of manners 
in their little community. They were not so much 
underbred as grossly careless, you see. Well, their 
one daughter grew up and fitted for college in the 
excellent academy of the town. She was still in the 
high light of her graduation halo, when her crudity 
burst full upon me. I then saw her for the first time 
in some years. The occasion was a church one. Half 
a dozen of the young people in the religious society 
to which my friends belonged had graduated in the 
same class with Gertrude — let us call her — and a 
reception was being given them on the evening of my 



Wellesley College 45 

arrival in town. I went, accompanied by an elderly 
relative of mine, of whom Gertrude was really fond. 

" Imagine my emotions when, upon entering the 
church parlours, I saw the girls and boys for whom 
the reception had been arranged sitting in a rocking- 
chair circle in the middle of the room, laughing and 
chatting together, with their backs toward their 
guests. When their friends congratulated them, 
they still sat rocking, receiving the good wishes and 
pleasant words over their shoulders. To my relative, 
a woman of nearly seventy, Gertrude thrust out a 
hand without rising. I was so annoyed that I did 
not congratulate the young person at all. 

'' In a few days I saw the girl's mother and was 
taken into her confidence as to Gertrude's choice 
of college. ^ I think we'll send her where she can 
live at home,' my friend announced. ' Of course it 
isn't the money, — Gertrude is our only child, and 
we can get her everything, — but I like to have her 
with me, and so does her father. She's all we've 
got, you see.' 

*' I thought of the reception and determined to 
risk an injudicious criticism. * You've known me 
a good while, Fanny,' I began, slowly, * and you say 
you're fond of me. Will you forgive me, then, for 
telling you that I think Gertrude would be a great 
deal better off away from home, in some good col- 



46 The College Girl of America 

lege like Wellesley or Smith, where she will be seen 
by eyes that are not partial, and helped to self-poise? 
Really, you know, she needs a little toning up in the 
matter of manners.' 

'' * What do I care for her manners if her mind 
is all right ? ' demanded my frank friend with some 
asperity. 

" And so obvious was it that she cared nothing, 
that I dropped the subject. 

" Gertrude is now a B. A. cum laude. But she still 
shakes hands with me without rising." 

The social life at Wellesley is a thing of rare 
beauty. Almost all the students are " Barn Swal- 
lows," and so cultivate good-fellowship and partici- 
pate in the biweekly dramatics and occasional dances 
which occur in the barn, a building near College 
Hall that has been well described as " a sublimated 
hay shed." The bam is lighted by electricity, heated 
by steam, and has a fine dancing-floor, upon which, 
however, none except students and their girl friends 
have ever trod a measure. 

Here many fair actresses have begun — and 
ended — their careers behind the footlights, have 
tried to stifle their laughter and preserve an impas- 
sioned tone while the crowded house giggled frankly 
at their love-making, have done the gallant to pretty 



Wellesley College 47 

freshmen, and have served their neighbours and their 
class in many similar ways, self-sacrificing and yet 
delightful. 

One of the most select societies of the college is 
the Shakespeare Club, which holds meetings every 
Wednesday evening throughout the academic year 
in a beautiful little house which exactly reproduces 
in its exterior aspect Shakespeare's birthplace, and 
holds, on an inner view, much of charm. The 
Phi Sigma, the Zeta Alpha, the Alpha Kappa Chi 
and the Tau Zeta Epsilon are the Greek letter 
societies here, and the Agora is the debating club. 
It was Mr. Durant himself who founded the Shake- 
speare Society, and who later encouraged Wellesley 
girls to give the annual outdoor play which has since 
become so important a feature of the college life. 

Another distinctly Wellesley rite is the May-day 
hoop-rolling of the seniors. A curious enough sight 
it is, too, to see these tall, graceful girls, clad in aca- 
demic gown and mortar-board, rolling their hoops 
over the level carriage road in front of College Hall 
very early in the morning, and having far more 
trouble at the business, you may be sure, than they 
were wont to experience In those long ago days when 
simple problems in addition represented their high- 
est scholarly achievement. Even to this final frolic 
of college life there is, however, an impressive side 



48 The College Girl of America 

when the members of the class, soon to be parted, 
make a circle with their hoops, and, so massed to- 
gether, lustily sing their dear class song. 

Tree Day, which comes later on, is a direct herit- 
age from Mr. Durant, who bade the earliest classes 
set aside one day in Maytime for an outdoor college 
revel, for the planting and cherishing of chosen 
trees, for song and ode and pageantry, and for recog- 
nition of the sympathy between life and its mother, 
Nature. Since the primitive celebration of 1877, 
there has been no break in the succession of Welles- 
ley's Tree Days; on the contrary, the evolution has 
been steadily in the direction of more graceful and 
picturesque ceremonies. Year by year the tone has 
been more consistently poetic, the costumes more 
dainty, the musical and dramatic elements more 
effective. More and more each year the ceremony 
in which the freshmen plant their tree, and the 
seniors bid farewell to theirs, takes the form of a 
beauteous sylvan masque. Sometimes green-robed 
dryads with leafy wands come dancing from the 
woodland, whence a blast of the huntsman's horn 
has called Robin Hood and his merry men; some- 
times wild-haired gipsies toss their tambourines; 
sometimes gnomes in earth-coloured garments troop 
by with spade on shoulder; sometimes the flowers 
of the field blend their petal hues ; sometimes Eng- 




MAY -DAY HOOP -ROLLING. 




TREE DAY. 



Wellesley College 49 

lish maidens weave the circle about the ribboned 
May-pole : but always this unique festival redounds 
to and is inspired by the love of nature. This is a 
family party. No men are ever admitted for it. 

Not so Float Day. In that the world shares. 
Miss Katherine Lee Bates, herself a professor at 
Wellesley, as well as a gifted poet, has thus charm- 
ingly described one phase of a representative Float : 
" The spectators, numbered by thousands, were 
gathered by seven o'clock — daylight still, although 
a filmy half-moon peeped down from the quiet arch 
of blue, a surreptitious guest. The tall oaks on the 
steep slope of Pall Mall stood motionless, as if 
listening to the mirthful sounds from Lake Waban. 
Now it was the murmurous laughter of the great 
throng that, seated on shawls and cushions, filled 
the curving shore and reached out upon the spacious 
platform of the boathouse; now it was the sylvan 
note of a bugle, and now the chant of youthful 
voices, the treble gallantly reinforced by deeper 
tones. Sometimes came a sweet blithe strain from 
the Glee Club ; but in the main a fashion of miscel- 
laneous musical repartee prevailed, in which one class 
strove against another with sturdy diversion in 
favour of a third and fourth rival, — an occasionally 
ludicrous effect calling out derisive applause." 

Inasmuch as Float Day is the one festival of 



so The College Girl of America 

this girl's college concerning which the outside 
world knows almost as much as is to be known, I 
will not dwell upon it further than to say that if the 
moon and other weather conditions are right, it 
offers an exquisite memory to the store of whom- 
soever participates in it. Japanese lanterns glim- 
mering here and there, music on the water, pretty 
girls in pretty gowns, and, finally, the crews grouped 
together to form a beautiful star, are some of the 
items that contribute to this charming event, the 
logical but poetic climax of the crew-training, which 
is a feature of Wellesley's athletic life. Miss Lucille 
E. Hill, the physical director of the college, believes 
far more in athletics than in gymnastics. To be sure, 
Wellesley girls practise indoors, but this only as a 
means to an end, — and when out-of-door life is im- 
possible. Rowing, tennis, golf, basket-ball, cross- 
country running, and hockey, are particularly 
encouraged. Lately a new exercise, putting the shot, 
has been added to the list of organized sports, and 
bids fair to become very popular. 

The culmination to an individual of athletic life 
at Wellesley comes, of course, when a girl is elected 
to the crew. Once 125 girls applied and tried for 
places on the 'varsity eight. From the very start, 
the boat work on the lake has been encouraged, but 
in the beginning it was a white muslin indulgence, — 



Wellesley College 51 

as witness the occasion when the girls rowed Long- 
fellow across the lake in the beauteous barque, 
Evangeline. Nowadays, however, the barges are 
very professional looking affairs, manned as they 
are by maidens in dark blouses and bloomers, using 
the Oxford stroke. 

Easy as it would be to ignore the subject of 
money, I propose in the case of Wellesley to give the 
actual cost of one student's life. To many girls, 
as I very well know, this point is vital. Here, then, 
is the account of a girl whose parents allowed her 
five hundred and fifty dollars a year : 

Received $55° 

College bills . $400 

Books, stationery, etc 50 

Travelling expenses, including trips into Bos- 
ton 24 

Clothes bought at college, a hat, a pair of danc- 
ing slippers, etc 14 

Furniture for my room, desk, bookcase, etc. . 10 

Presents, Christmas, etc 25 

Food for my tea-table ..... 5 

Recreation • '3 

Sundries • 9 

Total $550 — $550 

The girl who must earn part of her money her- 
self reduces her expenses by living in a cheaper 
boarding-house off the campus, perhaps paying her 



52 The College Girl of America 

board by tutoring the landlady's children. The ways 
of earning money at college are countless. Tutoring 
proves a lucrative occupation, and I know a girl who, 
for two years, has met all her expenses with money 
thus earned. Other girls at Wellesley sell blue 
prints, darn stockings, make gym and fencing suits, 
or copy themes. 

It must not be thought that the student who works 
for her education is in any way handicapped or 
looked down upon. Except that she has less time 
at her disposal, she has an equal showing with the 
millionaire's daughter. At Wellesley more than 
one class president has belonged to the Cooperative 
Association. For it is character and personality 
which count here, not money. 

The social opportunities of Wellesley girls are 
many and varied. Distinguished visitors from over- 
seas are often entertained at the college. Last win- 
ter, when Yeats, the Irish poet, came to this country, 
he gave his first lecture, available to a Boston audi- 
ence, at Wellesley, and that the occasion might be the 
more widely interesting, President Caroline Hazard 
of the college invited the Boston Authors' Club, of 
which she is a member, to come out for the after- 
noon. Thus Wellesley girls had, that day, an oppor- 
tunity, not only to enjoy a marvellously interesting 
address by a well-known foreign author, but a 



Wellesley College 53 

chance also to meet Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and 
many other distinguished representatives of the best 
society America has produced. 

Four years in such surroundings as the College 
Beautiful supplies, with such a normal regimen of 
work and play as has been here mapped out, with 
such memories of self-sacrifice and aspiration as 
make the Wellesley background, and such generous 
opportunities for culture as give it its present atmos- 
phere, may well make the undergraduate here be- 
lieve the truth of the text expounded each Flower 
Sunday of the academic year, when Henry Durant's 
memory and Mrs. Durant's living interest are es- 
pecially celebrated in the college chapel. What is 
the text? What should it be but " God is Love." 



VASSAR COLLEGE 

Thousands who have heard of Vassar College 
know little or nothing of the man behind the work, 
but none of these thousands were educated at 
Poughkeepsie, it is safe to say, inasmuch as the 
natal day of its founder is one of the two or three 
great days in the Vassar College year. In his own 
time, Matthew Vassar was a very substantial figure, 
— one of the most successful business men, indeed, 
which this country has ever known. He was not 
American bom, however, for it was at East Dere- 
ham, Parish of Tuddenham, Norfolk, England, that 
he first saw the light of day. His father was a 
farmer, and his mother a farmer's daughter. But 
the Vassar family was of French descent, Mat- 
thew's great-grandfather having settled in Norfolk 
at a time when his name had the form of Le Vas- 
seur. His family cherished a tradition that the 
Therese whom Jean Jacques Rousseau made his wife 
was of their line. 

Very far removed from Rousseau in moral 
stamina and in religious sense were the Vassars 

54 



Vassar College 55 

among whom Matthew grew up. It was, indeed, 
in order that they might secure greater rehgious 
freedom that James Vassar and his wife came to 
this country with his brother Thomas, in 1796. 
The boy Matthew was then a promising child of four. 
The httle family spent their first winter in America 
in New York. But early in the spring of 1797, the 
two brothers, having purchased a farm of one hun- 
dred and fifty acres in Dutchess County, near Pough- 
keepsie, they there took up residence. There it was 
that Thomas Vassar started the successful brewery 
enterprise upon which the family fortune — and 
incidentally, Vassar College — was builded. Suc- 
cess came quickly. For it was only a year or two 
after the first barley, purchased in England, had 
sprouted in the responsive Dutchess County soil, that 
little Matthew and his mother began to be seen very 
often driving away to Poughkeepsie in a farm- 
wagon, which had a barrel of ale standing up proudly 
behind the" seat. By 1801, the demand for the Vas- 
sar product became so great that the farm was sold 
and business begun on a much larger basis. 

Thus things went on until Matthew reached the 
age of fourteen. Then his father proposed to take 
him into the brewery as an assistant. But, rather 
oddly, the boy refused to listen to the proposition. 
Possibly this was a mere childish freak on his 



56 The College Girl of America 

part. Certainly it cannot be ascribed to any Puri- 
tanic abhorrence for beer-making, inasmuch as, when 
older, and presumably wiser, Matthew Vassar quite 
contentedly carried on the lucrative business his 
father had begun. But he did not go into the work 
at fourteen. Threatened with a seven years' appren- 
ticeship to a tanner as an alternative, he appealed 
to his mother for help, which she, motherlike, gave 
generously. The tanner was to come on a specified 
morning, but when the hour arrived Matthew 
Vassar was nowhere to be found. The day before he 
and his mother had walked down to New Hamburg, 
eight miles below Poughkeepsie, the lad with an 
extra shirt and a pair of stockings tied up in a ban- 
danna handkerchief, the mother with tears in her 
eyes, but — one must believe — respect in her heart 
for her son's desire to make his own way in the 
world. At the ferry-landing the boy received a kiss 
and seventy-five cents. His mother watched the boat 
safely to the other shore of the Hudson, after which 
she walked back to Poughkeepsie. 

Meanwhile, young Matthew tramped down the 
western bank to Newburgh, where he secured a place 
as clerk in a store. Here he stayed four years, sav- 
ing his money the while, — as do all the successful 
men one reads about. At the end of this time, 
being eighteen years old, and having come to " sensi- 



Vassar College 57 

ble " views of life, he returned to Poughkeepsie with 
one hundred and fifty dollars, and entered his 
father's establishment as bookkeeper and collector. 
A year later the brewery burned. 

This was Matthew Vassar's opportunity to show 
his remarkable business ability. He knew that 
money was to be made in brewing, and he was de- 
termined, even if fate had seemed fickle toward him, 
that Vassar wealth should be forthcoming as a result 
of Vassar brew. So he began making ale which he 
himself delivered about the town. In addition to 
his wholesale trade he turned an honest penny 
serving oysters and ale in a little basement-room of 
the Poughkeepsie court-house to those who cared to 
buy. Thus he so prospered that a little before his 
twenty-first birthday he was able to take unto him- 
self a wife. Later there was built a substantial new 
brewery with which the founder of Poughkeepsie' s 
college for women was personally associated for 
a term of years, almost up to the time of his death, 
indeed. But long before this, — in 1845, — M^- 
Vassar visited Europe and made an extended trip 
through Great Britain and on the Continent. Then 
it was, perhaps, that the idea of founding some 
great public institution first began to take definite 
shape in his mind. His college for women is said 
to have been the thought of a hard-working teacher, 



58 The College Girl of America 

his niece, Lydia Booth. Certain it is that during the 
years following his return from the grand tour, the 
idea of an institution which should do for young 
women what such great schools as Yale and Harvard 
were doing for young men gradually developed in 
his mind, reaching full maturity about i860. As 
he himself said, in words which George William 
Curtis thought ought to be written in letters of 
gold on the front of Vassar College : " It occurred 
to me that woman, having received from her 
Creator the same intellectual constitution as man, 
has the same right as man to intellectual culture and 
development. It is my hope to be the instrument, in 
the hands of Providence, of founding an institution 
which shall accomplish for young women what our 
colleges are accomplishing for young men." 

Pursuant to this ideal, the charter for the Vassar 
Female College was obtained from the Legislature 
of New York, and on the fourth day of June, 1861, 
Mr. Vassar broke ground with a spade which is still 
preserved, for the Main Building, which is still in 
use. The site was two miles east of the city of 
Poughkeepsie, in a park which, from many points 
of view, offers an ideal background for student life. 
In September, 1865, the college was opened, with 
over three hundred students enrolled in the first class. 
Two years later the name was changed to Vassar 



Vassar College 59 

College. For almost three years after this its 
devoted founder gave nearly all his time and the 
bulk of his strength to promoting the interests of the 
college. He died at the great institution he had 
created, in June, 1868, while delivering his annual 
address before its board of trustees. He left no 
children, but the three-quarters of a million dollars 
which he had bestowed upon Vassar College was 
later increased by his nephews, Matthew, junior, and 
John Guy, to considerably over a million and a 
quarter. Small wonder that the birthday of this 
generous friend is observed as a gala-day at Vassar, 
and that speakers of national reputation delight then 
to honour this really great self-made man. 

The first social function in the college year is the 
reception given to the freshmen by the Christian 
Association. Soon after this, as the girl is getting 
well into the swing of college life, comes the anni- 
versary of the Philalethean Society. Philaletheis 
is the mother of all the societies of the college, and 
as such is naturally ancient and honourable. She 
was born December 5, 1865. To her any student 
may belong. And because she has the four Hall 
Plays, which are another feature of Vassar life, 
every student early enrolls for membership. After 
that the Vassar girl looks about her and begins really 
to absorb the atmosphere of the college. Already, 



6o The College Girl of America 

no doubt, she has fallen unconsciously into the life 
of the place and begun to view things from the Vas- 
sar angle; already all the little peculiarities which 
differentiate life here from life in other colleges 
have become to her intimate and almost necessary. 
So she comes into her heritage. 

Unlike many of the girls' colleges, Vassar has 
very little relationship with the life of the town in 
which it is situated. The college, indeed, forms a 
small town by itself. The girls live in dormitories on 
the campus, and confine themselves pretty closely 
from Monday to Friday night to strictly academic 
interests. One of the pleasantest things about 
Vassar is the fact that the dormitories are very near 
each other. The founder's first idea was, indeed, 
to have all Vassar students live under a single roof, 
as if they belonged to one large family, and it was 
with this in mind that Main was erected. 

The original large, long building, with a trans- 
verse wing at each end, with library and porte- 
cochere in the centre, is the special domain to-day 
of the seniors. And particularly given over to the 
girls in the highest class is the corridor, which is on 
the same floor with the chapel. Only seniors live 
here, and only seniors furnish and care for the par- 
lour at the south end of it. Small wonder, there- 
fore, that to be a senior at Vassar is the height 



Vassar College 6i 

of undergraduate aspiration. The seniors enjoy 
several special privileges for which the other classes 
have to wait. In the main dining-room, their tables 
occupy the entire length of the long apartment, 
stretching down the centre in parallel lines, a thing 
which brings the class together three times a day, 
and enables a girl really to know those who will be 
graduated with her. 

The height of senior happiness comes upon a 
girl's birthday. It is the custom for each senior 
table to celebrate the birthday of every member of 
the class sometime during the year, and a committee 
is early appointed to manage the matter. Thus the 
fortunate maiden whose day has arrived finds many 
queer-shaped bundles by her plate, and always a 
superb cake to be cut by her. While the other stu- 
dents look longingly on at the candle-lighted, flower- 
bestrewn tables, with their birthday cream and cake, 
the seniors sometimes have sung, tantalizingly : 

" Only Seniors have this privilege, 
Others watch with envious eye, 
Don't you care, you'll be here sometime, 
In the glorious by and by." 

Especially gay is the birthday party of the presi- 
dent of the senior class, for which the tables are 
usually massed together. When the feast is over, 



62 The College Girl of America 

the toasts responded to, the flowers gathered up as 
mementos, and the guests of the evening come out 
to the hall, they find the girls of other classes massed 
by the dining-room doors. The undergraduates 
then cheer vociferously as the honoured senior of 
seniors makes her v^^ay, with her friends, to the 
senior parlour. The furniture in this parlour be- 
longs to individual members of the class. Thus it is 
that each year the room presents a different appear- 
ance, and reflects pretty exactly the class standard 
of taste. A senior may use the parlour at any time, 
but she is never supposed to study there. 

A great deal is said at Vassar about the " sister 
classes," by which is meant the seniors and sopho- 
mores, juniors and freshmen. After the spring 
vacation the mutual admiration of sorority is at 
its height, and every night between dinner and 
chapel, as the seniors withdraw to the steps of 
Rockefeller Hall and sing their class song, the sopho- 
mores sit below and adore. When chapel bell rings, 
however, they promptly line up and stand in deferen- 
tial fashion, while the seniors, four abreast, walk 
in to take their places of honour directly in front of 
President Taylor's desk. It is amusing to note that 
the juniors and freshmen on the steps of Strong 
Hall feebly emulate this bit of ritual. 

The height of sophomore devotion to the senior 




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Vassar College 63 

is attained on Class Day when the Daisy Chain 
attention comes to the fore. For nearly a day the 
entire sophomore class picks daisies, and for part of 
another day the Sophs work hard, making a long, 
thick rope out of the pretty field flowers. As a re- 
ward for this loving toil, fourteen of the prettiest 
sophomores are chosen to carry the chain over their 
shoulders as the graduating class moves out of the 
main building on Class Day. Standing two by two, 
they then make an aisle for the seniors, and, after the 
distinguished maidens are seated on the platform, 
the chain is wound around their chairs. Later it 
is placed about the Class Tree. 

The beauty of the surrounding country at Vassar 
is a constant incentive to out-of-door activity. The 
walks to Cedar Bridge, where bloodroot and anem- 
ones first come in the spring, the climb up the long 
slopes of Richmond Hill to the lone pine-tree which 
stands sentinel on top, the tramp to the top of Sun- 
rise Hill thence to view the Blue Catskills on the 
north and the bluer highlands on the south are 
things to quicken the Vassar girl's pulse in memory 
as they stirred her blood in achievement. 

One of the choicest memories that Vassar has 
implanted can be shared, however, only by those 
older alumnae who were at the college in Miss 
Mitchell's day, and so were privileged to attend her 



64 The College Girl of America 

Dome Parties. On these occasions the hostess sat 
in state among her instruments, her cat and kittens 
helping her receive. The rhymes for the cards, 
which, of course, only astronomy students received, 
had always been written by Miss Mitchell herself, 
and were quaint and delightful. 

In every possible way, though, the old Vassar is 
linked with the new. A great deal used to be said 
about flapjack days. It is interesting to know that 
these still survive, griddle-cakes being regularly 
served twice a week in the big dining-room. The 
food at Vassar, though good, is fairly plain. Of 
course there could be nothing extravagant in a col- 
lege which costs only $400 a year, including tuition. 
The rooms, assigned at an annual drawing, by lot, 
are usually in a suite, two bedrooms and one study. 
The girls make their own beds, and, to some extent, 
see to their own rooms. The furniture is always 
simple, but sufficient. There are now about one hun- 
dred students in each hall on the campus, while Main 
accommodates five hundred in all. 

The Vassar girl does not wear cap and gown. 
Neither does she have much use for a hat. In cold 
weather she may often be seen on the campus with 
a thick coat, warm gloves and luxurious furs, per- 
haps, quite bareheaded. To be sure, there is a strict 
rule to the effect that she may never go in the cars 




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Vassar College 65 

or down-town " uncovered," to use Paul's parlance, 
but this troubles her little, inasmuch as she spends 
only a small part of her life in Poughkeepsie. Yet 
once the Opera House of Poughkeepsie saw her 
often and attained world-wide renown as a result. 
This was when the Vassar girls gave " Antigone " 
in the original Greek, on its stage. 

Chapel attendance is compulsory at Vassar, but 
it has never occurred to the girls to make a hardship 
out of this. Similarly, students are expected not to 
go away from the college much, except during va- 
cations. And when leaving town, they must, in 
every case, secure permission. In general, it will be 
seen, the life at Vassar is distinctly a campus one, 
with a far greater proportion of work than of play in 
it. Saturday, to be sure, is the free day, and then, 
as on Friday evening, social affairs may be held. 
But all through the week the ideal kept before the 
girl is that of work. 

To this the newcomer very quickly becomes ac- 
customed. She is roused in the morning by the 
seven o'clock bell, and she learns to be ready for 
breakfast in half an hour. When she leaves the din- 
ing-room she has until half-past eight before the 
recitation day begins, time enough to straighten her 
room, and even glance over a doubtful sentence in 
her translation. No freshman has more than three 



66 The College Girl of America 

hours of recitation a day, — the first year is aho- 
gether " required " work, — so that she may easily 
spend a good proportion of time in out-of-door 
sport, or in " frivoHng." Three hours of exercise 
are required a week, though golf, tennis, swim- 
ming, basket-ball and hockey are accepted as ful- 
filling this requirement. Athletics are governed by 
an athletic association, and " gym " work is compul- 
sory. Yet so glad are the girls to make use of the 
complete equipment of baths and swimming-tank 
and apparatus which help to make exercise in their 
gymnasium inviting that they never stop to remem- 
ber the " must." 

For an atmosphere distinctively Vassar we must 
turn to the " Trig Ceremonies." These correspond 
to the burning of mathematical books customary 
at some colleges for men, and in them the sopho- 
mores celebrate their completion of the prescribed 
course in trigonometry. The play of the occasion, 
given on the stage of Philalethean Hall before an 
audience of students and faculty only, is almost in- 
variably an original and clever travesty on the 
terrors of this prescribed course in mathematics. 
One year trigonometry was represented in the form 
of a young professor who courted and wed a maiden 
typifying that particular class. Another time the 
girls presented a skit founded on the voyage of 



Vassar College 67 

Columbus, in which the land of Trig was discovered 
and conquered. ** Whatever the form of the play, 
sophomores are extolled in it, freshmen kept under a 
steady fire of grinds, juniors receive back with * 
interest their grinds upon the younger sisters at the 
preceding ceremonies, seniors are flattered, and col- 
lege life in general taken off as often as possible." 
The Tree Ceremonies, like those of '' Trig," be- 
long to the sophomores. Whatever else they lack, 
they are supposed to have the fascination of mystery. 
On some auspicious night, at the time of the dedica- 
tion of the class-tree, the sophomores, in costume, 
meet by secret and march v/ith lanterns to the 
chosen spot where the solemn rites appertain- 
ing to the dedication of an elm, already chosen, are 
to take place. One year the girls will be darkies; 
another, animals going into the ark; again, vestal 
virgins in sheets and pillow-cases. The freshmen 
usually find out about the ceremonies and try to 
interfere. Afterward both parties get amicably 
together and enjoy the food part of the entertain- 
ment, careful preparations for which have usually 
been made well in advance. On one occasion a 
diversion was supplied by waxworks in which the 
various college dignitaries were imposingly repre- 
sented. Members of the faculty at Vassar can stand 



68 The College Girl of America 

jokes at their own expense. Witness this in a recent 
Vassarionr. " None but professors may talk aloud 
in the library." 

The Junior Party was for years a Hudson River 
trip, to the accompaniment of music, on a steamer 
chartered for the occasion. Latterly, however, it 
has sometimes been a lawn party. One year it was 
a hay-making frolic, the guests raking hay by moon- 
light on the campus, and seeking in each pile of the 
sweet-savoured grass the dainty souvenirs and 
prizes hidden away by their hostesses. There is 
always fun, too, at Hallowe'en and on St. Valentine's 
Day. But perhaps the best times of all come as 
a result of the cosy private spreads, with their crack- 
ers, jelly, olives, and similar indigestibles. Many of 
these are held at the time of the Ice Carnival, a festi- 
val observed on the lake at night to an accompani- 
ment of bonfires and Chinese lanterns with bright 
costumes, fancy skating, and good music from the 
band. 

From all that has been said here about the various 
forms of pleasure and sport at Vassar, it must not 
be thought that the academic side of life is ever long 
lost sight of. Vassar girls are really hard students. 
One of their professors has been credited with say- 
ing, in whimsical criticism of them : " Young 



Vassar College 69 

ladies are much pleasanter to teach, and they are not 
intellectually inferior to men in any way, but one 
thing they cannot learn — they do not know how 
to flunk; it seems utterly to unstring them if they 
fail in a recitation." From which it may be in- 
ferred that since Vassar girls are fairly happy and 
poised, they do not often " fail in recitations." 

Each subject taught at this college has its own 
special room, and almost all departments have their 
allied clubs. Thus there is the Shakespeare Club, 
the Contemporary Club, the Marshall Economic 
Club, and many others. Consumers' League en- 
deavour, it is interesting to note, is particularly 
active here. So, every day of every week is healthily 
filled with work and play. Sundays are times of quiet 
and peacefulness, with morning service conducted by 
divines of different denominations who come from 
all over the country to preach, and an evening Bible 
lecture and a prayer-meeting, led by the president of 
the college. The old chapel in Main, whose floor 
has been worn rough by three generations of Vassar 
girls, is this fall (1904) to be abandoned for a 
splendid new building, very imposing with its 
Gothic interior and its rose windows, its granite 
walls, and its well-proportioned dome. But the 
lowly and reverent spirit in which daily worship is 



70 The College Girl of America 

conducted will be the same, and in the years to come, 
as in the past, these girls will say to themselves, 
" The graduate of this college dare not let her life be 
a failure; she is under bonds to do things in the 
world." 




A MT. HOLYOKE GIRL. 



MT. HOLYOKE COLLEGE 

" Mt. Holyoke College is the product, not of 
the Zeitgeist, not of any impersonal evolutionary in- 
fluence, not of merely cosmic forces ; but it is rather 
the vital personal embodiment of the thought, life, 
and love of a multitude of thinking, living, loving 
persons of whom Mary Lyon was first and chief." 
In this remarkable sentence of a recent Founder's 
Day oration, President Hopkins of Williams Col- 
lege summed up, as no one else has ever done, the 
explanation of the college at South Hadley. There 
is probably in all American history no other woman 
precisely like Mary Lyon ; and certainly there is in 
our country to-day no other institution which pos- 
sesses exactly the characteristic features of Mt. 
Holyoke. Further, these two truths are one. 

Mary Lyon never talked much of woman's rights ; 
she said very little, if anything, of woman's sphere. 
But she believed in, and loved to dwell on, the great 
work a woman may do in the world. And she was 
thoroughly convinced that to do that work well a 
girl must be educated. " Oh, how Immensely im- 

71 



72 The College Girl of America 

portant is the preparation of the daughters of the 
land to be good mothers ! " she used often to say. 
" If they are prepared for this situation, they will 
have the most important preparation which they can 
have for any other/' Repeatedly she asserted, with 
wisdom far in advance of that of her time, that 
it seemed to her much less of an evil that farmers 
and mechanics have scanty stores of knowledge, such 
as our common schools give, than that their wives, 
the mothers of their children, should be uneducated. 
With this splendid thought in her heart, she and her 
friends came together and laid the corner-stone of 
Mt. Holyoke Seminary, October 3, 1836, having 
secured by arduous and well-nigh heroic labours 
the nucleus of the fund necessary to the launching 
of her high enterprise. Yet, though her heart was 
fixed, her spirit was humble; we read that she 
stooped down and wrote upon the corner-stone: 
" The Lord hath remembered our low estate." 

After another year which represented such un- 
selfish devotion to her prospective school as may 
be read in the annals of no other educational institu- 
tion, the seminary was opened for the reception of 
pupils. Often then^ and later, Mary Lyon said of 
Mt. Holyoke, " Had I a thousand lives, I would 
sacrifice them all in suffering and hardship for its 
sake. Did I possess the greatest fortune, I could 



Mt. Holyoke College 73 

readily relinquish it all and become poor, and more 
than poor, if its prosperity should demand it." 

From the very first, Mt. Holyoke has had in its 
make-up respect for household labour. It is interest- 
ing to observe that even in the beginning this was 
considered a great objection by many friends of the 
seminary. Miss Lyon, however, defended it warmly. 
She used to say that it was her desire, not to teach 
domestic duties, but rather to help girls to take, 
each one, a daughter's part in the household, and 
thus promote the happiness of the family. " All 
are to take part, not as a servile labour for which 
they are to receive a small weekly remuneration, but 
as a gratuitous service to the institution of which 
they are members, designed for its improvement 
and elevation. . . . An obliging disposition is of 
special importance in forming a lovely social and 
domestic character. Young ladies at school, with 
all the conveniences and comforts which they should 
have, and with all the benefits of study which they 
should enjoy, can have but little opportunity for 
self-denial. The domestic work done in the 
varied and mutual duties of the day furnishes 
many little chances for the manifestation of a 
generous, obliging, and self-denying spirit, the 
influence of which, we trust, will be felt through 
life. It also helps to give a sense of obligation. 



74 The College Girl of America 

Domestic life is little else but a continued scene of 
conferring and receiving favours. And how much 
of happiness depends on their being conferred with 
the manifest evidence of a willing heart, and on 
their being received with suitable tokens of grati- 
tude! These two lovely traits go hand in hand, not 
often to be separated. The formation of a character 
that can he grateful is an object of special impor- 
tance in a lady's education." 

Tliat, even in Mary Lyon's time, however, there 
were other things at Mt. Holyoke beside study, 
prayer-meetings, and housework, one finds from 
this delicious bit of circus reminiscence supplied 
by Mrs. Amelia Stearns of the class of '49 : " We 
were admitted to the show at half-price, after 
having been especially advised by Miss Lyon 
to improve this opportunity to see the elephant 
and other rare specimens of animated nature. 
She made but one restriction. We were not to 
stay to witness the performance, but when we 
should see any teacher moving toward the exit we 
were to follow her at once. After viewing the 
animals we took seats while the elephants marched 
around the amphitheatre. One with a howdah on 
his back was halted near us, and the manager called 
for ladies to mount and ride. Two or three misses 
started forward and then drew back timidly, until a 



Mt. Holyoke College 75 

young lady of the senior class, with head erect and 
fearless mien, walked to the front, climbed the 
ladder, and seated herself as if she were an Eastern 
princess accustomed to take her airing in this man- 
ner. There was a whispering among the juniors : 
' What a bold, bad action for a missionary's daugh- 
ter ! How dare a senior set us such an example ? ' 
Some said she would surely be suspended, — perhaps 
expelled. Others thought she might be let off with 
a public reprimand if duly penitent. It was believed 
that the sentiment of the seminary would certainly 
demand some heroic measure. 

" The great beast went around with its burden, 
the senior descended safely and resumed her former 
seat, unabashed. Directly a tiger leaped from its 
cage and rolled over and over with its keeper in 
frightful play. The performance was well under 
way or ever we were aware, and we had seen no 
teachers moving. Bless their kind hearts! Was 
it that they in their innocence did not know when it 
was time to start, or were our eyes turned away from 
our chaperons and holden, that we should not see 
them? When all was over and we went out with 
the crowd, we spied a teacher standing near the gate, 
apparently watching for stragglers, but we passed 
by on the other side without a challenge. At supper- 
time all the lambs were secure in the fold, and not 



76 The College Girl of America 

a wolf among them. We never heard that the auda- 
cious senior met with the sHghtest reproof nor lost 
caste for her rash exploit. Miss Lyon, wise as Solo- 
mon, knew when to keep silence and when to speak." 

For the second year of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 
a hundred girls were admitted, while to several hun- 
dred Miss Lyon was obliged to say, " There is no 
more room." Every year since, the same thing has 
been repeated to large numbers of girls, and this 
in spite of the fact that there are many college 
houses, where in the beginning there was only one. 
The trustees feel that it is quite as well that Mt. 
Holyoke should not grow to be too large. To-day 
there are seven hundred students, and to develop 
high Christian character in seven hundred girls is, 
perhaps, all that may well be undertaken by one 
humble-minded institution in learning. 

Are you wondering why, with so many other 
colleges vainly bidding for students, Mt. Holyoke 
has to turn scores of girls away each year? It is 
a fair question. What is it, then, that this place of 
ancient and worthy name now offers the bright 
young girl who is deciding where she will spend 
the four years which are to give her an all-around 
education and a degree? 

At its inception, of course, Mt. Holyoke cher- 
ished three ideals, — first, to give the highest and 



Mt. Holyoke College 77 

most thorough education possible; second, to com- 
bine with cultivation of the intellectual powers the 
no less careful cultivation of the spiritual life, basing 
such culture on the Bible, and teaching that all 
duties should seem holy, and that all things worth 
doing should be done thoroughly; third, to offer 
advantages at such a modest sum that girls of slender 
means need not be turned aside from seeking them 
by money considerations. Well, the Mt. Holyoke of 
to-day is dominated by the very same ideals. Two 
generations have witnessed, not a complete re-crea- 
tion, but a gradual expansion. The old Mt. Holyoke 
held all the possibilities of the new. The institution 
which Mary Lyon founded had within it the germ 
of to-day's splendid twentieth-century college. Mt. 
Holyoke of old was able, therefore, to expand with- 
out friction, without revolution, without upheaval, 
into the composite Mt. Holyoke of to-day. The 
seminary was built upon Christian ideals and self- 
abnegation. The college rests on exactly the same 
eternal things. 

Of course times have changed, and the piety of 
1904 is by no means the same in its exterior aspect 
as the piety of 1840. But no one who has attended 
the morning service in the chapel has failed to 
understand the spirit of the place and to know it for 
the same spirit which Mary Lyon long ago im- 



78 The College Girl of America 

planted in the hearts of Mt. Holyoke girls. When, 
to the deep, rich tones of one of the best organs in 
Massachusetts, the seniors, stately and reverend in 
their sombre symbols of academic rank, take their 
seats in the centre of the chapel, with the members 
of the faculty at the left, and the main part of the 
big room given over to the undergraduates, — and 
the sweet and beautiful president, in a rich academic 
gown, bows her head in silent prayer, one feels Mt. 
Holyoke to be the same to-day as yesterday, despite 
external changes. Thrilling indeed is it when the 
students rise and sing, with wonderful heartiness, 
the " Holy, Holy, Holy " hymn. Then there follows 
a collect or two, and then the stirring missionary 
anthem, " We March, We March to Victory." 
Responsive reading, a Gloria, a Scripture lesson, and 
an extemporaneous prayer referring to the Bible 
message of the day, come next. The short service 
closes with the Lord's Prayer, in which all share. 
After that the seniors file slowly out to the strains 
of an inspiring recessional. The beauty of this 
service, its peace, its sweetness, its strength, fill 
every visitor to Mt. Holyoke with reverent delight. 
A wonderful thing is it to begin day after day of a 
college year with such an exercise, in the chapel of 
the noble hall named after Mary Lyon. 

It was not from the stately morning service, how- 



Mt. Holyoke College 79 

ever, but from something deliciously, almost ludi- 
crously, different, that I gained my own first im- 
pressions of Mt. Holyoke. I had just arrived at 
the college, and was being shown about, when my 
attention was riveted by a bulletin-board covered 
with the most extraordinary notices : " Five cents 
apiece for live frogs (body three inches or more), 
benefit library fund." " Shirt-waists made to fit for 
seventy-five cents — for Carnegie offer." *' Sham- 
pooing, thirty-five cents, including tar or castile soap. 
Others must be supplied." The meaning of these 
curious notices on the official bulletin-board of 
Porter Hall was soon explained by my guide. They 
had been inspired, it appeared, by the students' desire 
to raise the rather large sum which Mr. Carnegie 
had stipulated as a condition of his generous offer 
for a new library. Of course, with such a spirit 
as this to help it on, the necessary sum will be forth- 
coming. 

First, last, and always, the college at South 
Hadley is hospitable. This the freshman early 
learns, for as soon as she steps upon the Holyoke 
platform the opening day of the college year, she is 
cordially greeted by a member of the Christian 
Association's reception committee, helped with her 
suit-case, guided down the iron stairway to the 
street below, and, ere her new-found friend aban- 



So The College Girl of America 

dons her, comfortably settled in the car for South 
Hadley. When the car stops before Mary Lyon 
Chapel, some five miles out of Holyoke city, she is 
again greeted by a smiling upper-class girl, under 
whose tutelage she registers, receives her appoint- 
ment to house and room, and really begins her col- 
lege life. 

For the first week that life is a veritable whirl, 
with its wealth of new experiences, new impressions, 
new methods of work, new points of view. But 
gradually she finds her place. She has heard a 
great deal, of course, about the " housework " phase 
of life at Mt. Holyoke; possibly she has kicked 
against it rather vigorously. But she learns, when 
she comes to face the thing, that her duties are 
really of the lightest possible kind, and have been, 
so far as feasible, fitted to her individual capabilities. 
One student may have two tables to clear and two 
to lay ; another may have some post-ofiice service to 
perform; others have the care of the halls. But 
there is nothing which need occupy more than three- 
quarters of an hour a day at the outside. Every girl, 
therefore, has plenty of time at Mt. Holyoke for 
play, as well as for work, for sociability as well as 
for grind. And the slight housework makes it 
possible to-day, just as in Mary Lyon's time, for a 
hall accommodating seventy or a hundred girls to be 



Mt. Holyoke College 8i 

conducted quite comfortably with very few servants, 
— and hence at a minimum of expense. This is 
why a girl can go to Mt. Holyoke for three hundred 
dollars a year, a sum at least one hundred dollars 
less than the minimum expense in any other first- 
class Eastern college for women. 

One of the first fine facts which impresses itself 
upon the freshman is the realization that she is liv- 
ing, not in an oligarchy of faculty, — though, of 
course, the faculty have the final authority here, as 
elsewhere, — but in a democracy of students. For 
she is early told that the simple rules necessary for 
the regulation of life in such a large community are 
enforced by the undergraduates themselves, that the 
so-called students' league, whereof all students are 
members, has been given authority by the faculty 
in matters concerning chapel attendance, church- 
going, quiet hours, and the rule by which lights are 
out at ten o'clock. She discovers that the president 
of this body organized " to promote unity and 
loyalty in the college; good feeling between faculty 
and students; and to encourage personal responsi- 
bility " is always a senior, that its executive com- 
mittee is made up from all four classes, with one 
additional member chosen from among the recent 
graduates of the college, and that, through the inter- 
action of this committee and a committee of the 



82 The College Girl of America 

faculty, students and professors find a direct means 
of communication. Each house has a chairman and 
proctors under the general league scheme, and 
through them and the rebukes they may be called 
upon to administer, when she and her fellow-class- 
men wax hilarious, the new girl comes to know what 
student government at Mt. Holyoke really means. 
Possibly she finds this out by a note reminding her 
that she has been habitually absent from chapel. 
She hears that after three such notes a girl may be 
put off the campus. She hears also that this 
measure has never needed to be enforced. 

The Class is at Mt. Holyoke the chiefest '' tie that 
binds." In forming the basis for athletic compe- 
titions, in presenting plays, in putting through 
much of the social life, and part of the literary 
enterprises of the college, it is a unit of great im- 
portance. It is particularly desirable, therefore, that 
a girl shall early come into close relations with the 
others who entered with her. The way in which 
this is often effected has been interestingly described 
by one Mt. Holyoke girl as follows : " Some even- 
ing in early fall, as the freshman is ' plugging ' over 
her ' math,' she hears the sound of distant cheering; 
coloured lights flash across the campus. At the 
house next her own a crowd of girls is gathered, 
a class cheer rings out clear and sweet on the night 



Mt. Holyoke College 83 

air, coupled with two names lustily strung on at the 
end; another cheer, still another, and finally the 
freshman catches the sound of her own class numer- 
als, recognizes them with a sudden and joyous sense 
of proprietorship, drops the ' math ' books she is still 
holding, and dashes down the corridor to find an- 
other freshman. The two fling up a window, 
excitedly, and lean far out, squeezing each other's 
hands with an unwonted feeling of comradeship, 
as the merry, stumbling throng of seniors, juniors, 
or sophomores, out celebrating their class elections 
of the afternoon, hurry toward the broad veranda 
steps and again break into an improvised freshman 
cheer. Soon after, the freshman attends her first 
class-meeting, called by the junior president, and 
with that her love of class is fully established. True, 
she may not know more than five of her classmates 
even by name, and may be distinctly grateful to the 
enterprising young woman who suggests that the 
candidates for class chairman stand up, that the 
freshmen may find out who they are; but, never- 
theless, she feels already the passion for making 
19 — admired in the college world. And chattering 
of this, she links her arm in that of a freshman she 
has never seen before, and hurries to make known to 
the campus the doings of her class." 

So diverse is the life at Mt. Holyoke, that almost 



84 The College Girl of America 

every girl readily finds scope somewhere for her 
particular ability. If she is so fortunate as to have 
a good voice, she is early enrolled in the vested 
choir, becomes the proud possessor of a cotta, and 
inclines to boast a bit, in her letters home, of her 
part in that body of one hundred and eighty voices, 
the largest vested choir of women in the world. 
If golf, tennis, rowing, driving, or hockey be her 
favourite sport, she finds opportunity to distinguish 
herself along one of these lines, and — what is better 
still — is given credit by reason of her activity 
toward the four hours of exercise required each 
week. 

One of the earliest of the many festivals in which 
she shares is Mountain Day, in the fall, when the 
foliage is at its best and the fringed gentians glori- 
ously decorate the green. Peculiarly appropriate is 
it that Mt. Holyoke College, which is named after 
one of the superb peaks in the Green Mountain 
range in western Massachusetts, should, each year, 
speedily pay its respects to the everlasting hills. 

Tramping has ever been one of the favourite 
recreations at this college. The beauty of the region 
takes away all the monotony of just going out for 
exercise, for within fairly easy reach are a dozen 
attractive spots familiar to every Holyoke woman. 
Whether the Bluffs, the Larches, Titan's Pier, the 




THE TENNIS - COURTS. 




A PERFORMANCE OF "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM." 



Mt. Holyoke College 85 

Pass of Thermopylae, the Notch, the Ferry, Bitter 
Sweet Lane, or Mountain Pasture be selected, in- 
spiration will result. Included in the college grounds 
is Lake Nonotuck, well supplied with boats, which 
are in constant demand. The same lake is equally 
popular in winter as a skating ground, the slopes 
about it being used for coasting and for skeeying, 
a much-liked Norwegian sport. 

Of course there are at Mt. Holyoke, as at the 
other colleges, certain " set feasts," which come with 
each returning season. Founders' Day and Thanks- 
giving are especial times for receiving and enter- 
taining guests. A very pretty custom is that by 
which former students come back to their Alma 
Mater as to the old homestead for the November 
day of solemn thanks. All Hallowe'en is regularly 
celebrated by a masked ghost party, which affords 
scope for whatever originality the girls possess. 
The dining-halls are, for this occasion, made attract- 
ive with flowers and autumn fruits, the whole effect 
softened by candle-light. In one hall, perhaps, 
ghosts of departed days eat their dinners with appe- 
tites astoundingly unghostlike. Later, Mellen's 
Food babies, nuns, dryads, Quakers, and Canter- 
bury pilgrims hobnob noisily in the attic of one of 
the dormitories, while alcohol burns on salt to throw 



86 The College Girl of America 

a weird light and to supply the proper amount of 
" atmosphere." 

A girl possessed of dramatic ability speedily comes 
into her own at Mt. Holyoke. The dramatic inter- 
ests of the college are mainly in the hands of the 
different classes, to each of which is allowed a certain 
number of performances a year. Thus the sopho- 
mores have one play, the juniors two, and the seniors 
two, annually. All the plays must, however, be ap- 
proved, before presentation, by a standing committee 
of the faculty, to see that in the matter of costume, 
and so forth, they are all that they should be. The 
plays are generally acted outdoors on Prospect Hill, 
or in the gymnasium, where there is a good stage; 
and though there is little professional training, the 
dramas offered afford universal enjoyment to the 
audiences, frequently revealing, too, not a little 
talent on the part of the performers. 

On May-day, for three years past, in the wooded 
amphitheatre of Prospect Hill, have been given old 
English plays and pastimes of no little literary im- 
portance. The Elizabethan audience, as well as 
actor-folk, here appear, games of the period also, 
contributing to the charm and colour of the occa- 
sion. A quaint spectacle, certainly, for these modern 
times, is presented by the procession which, on 
May-day morning, winds up Prospect Hill from 




MiilMiiiilllillll iMMhi».fcaM*«^.»aa.««»-..> 
MAY - DAY PROCESSION. 




MAY -POLE DANCE. 



Mt. Holyoke College 87 

the gymnasium. Preceding the May queen are 
lordly heralds, and while Robin Hood and his 
merry men escort the damsel fair, Little John and 
Fair Maid Marian follow close behind. Beruffed 
and powdered ladies and gallants of Queen 
Elizabeth's court are also here, as are morris- 
men, milkmaids. May-pole dancers, and many other 
fanciful and grotesque characters. When the pro- 
cession reaches the Pepper Box, as the curious little 
lookout at the top of the hill is called, it halts and 
divides, forming into two lines, between which the 
May queen rides in state to the Box-steps, where she 
is helped by Robin Hood to dismount, and is sol- 
emnly crowned. Then follow the May-pole dances, 
performed by Britanny fisher maidens, to the shrill 
music of the hornpipe ; a Rainbow Dance, or the 
Daisy Dance, symbolic of the season, wdth twelve 
seniors gowned in yellow to represent the middle of 
the flower, twenty-four in white for the petals, and 
twelve in green for the stem. Music for this fan- 
tastic tripping- is usually furnished by the Mandolin 
Club. On one occasion, the quaint morality play, 
" Noah's Flood," was presented after the dancing, 
with an exact model of the old miracle stage, and 
with the unruly and boisterous Elizabethan audience 
duly in attendance. By six o'clock everybody has 
a good appetite for supper, served in picnic fashion 



88 The College Girl of America 

on the green. Then the evening opens with Eliza- 
bethan lyrics, sung by the choir. These are, in turn, 
followed by another play. Sometimes this has been 
the Florizel and Perdita portion of " Winter's Tale," 
sometimes a scene or two from " Midsummer 
Night's Dream." This year the May celebrations 
were deferred until June, and the Ben Greet com- 
pany secured as performers. 

In accordance with the original plan which Mary 
Lyon's far-seeing wisdom devised, Mt. Holyoke 
has always been a family, as well as a school. It 
has a beautiful and really distinctive home atmos- 
phere. Mary Lyon believed in the democratic ideal, 
and there is still absolutely no favouritism at Mt. 
Holyoke. The rooms are distributed by lot, so that 
even the poorest girls have their chance to get into 
the most attractive residence hall, Mary Brigham, 
in which the president lives. Every girl has, like- 
wise, a perfectly equal opportunity to sit at the 
president's table, and meet the many distinguished 
people who come to Mt. Holyoke in the course of 
the year. Dinner at Mary Brigham is the function 
of the day. When the president enters, escorting the 
guest of honour, she finds each girl at her place, 
looking very fresh and attractive. All remain stand- 
ing until the blessing has been pronounced. Then 
girls who have been appointed quietly withdraw to 



Mt. Holyoke College 89 

take their part in the domestic arrangement. The 
service at the tables is excellent, the plates being 
changed, the courses brought on, and the meal from 
soup to crackers and cheese conducted with admi- 
rable precision. Meanwhile good talk, college jokes, 
and sparkling repartee go on, Miss WooUey from 
her stately chair, presented in memory of President 
McKinley's visit to Mt. Holyoke, gently leading the 
conversation or listening appreciatively to a bright 
story which some one down at the end has volun- 
teered to tell. After dinner the girls frequently come 
in to the president's pleasant parlour for coffee and 
an informal chat before separating for their evening 
study. 

A great deal might be said of the admirable 
courses at Mt. Holyoke. But it seems feasible to 
discuss here only two or three of the more remark- 
able departments. Under this head should certainly 
be included the work carried on in the Dwight Art 
Building, under the able direction of Miss Jewett, 
who came to Mt. Holyoke a few years ago straight 
from advanced work with Benjamin Constant, 
Julien, and LeFevre in Paris. The building is on the 
site of the one hundred years' old Dwight homestead, 
and, if only because of its glorious view toward 
Beulahland and the Mt. Tom and Mt. Holyoke 
ranges, should inspire those who work in it to 



go The College Girl of America 

artistic appreciation. An especially attractive course 
given here is that in the history of art, with practice 
in drawing to help the girl to an appreciation of the 
masters studied. 

Many a girl who does not in the least know how 
to draw upon registering for this course comes 
through, as a result of careful teaching, with a de- 
cided sense of form, as well as with a serviceable 
knowledge of the masters and periods covered. 
Instead of an examination, there is, at the end of the 
year, an imaginary trip to the galleries of Europe, 
with a certain number of cities and a certain number 
of pictures covered. A satisfactory showing in this 
test implies ability to do original description, as well 
as such familiarity with the books read in the course 
of the year as enables a girl to cite a characteristic 
quotation from the critics. Thus the art work at 
Mt. Holyoke is all related to history and to life in 
a fashion at once fine and inspiring. 

Similarly, a debating society, more or less con- 
nected with an American history course, really dis- 
cusses current politics. What is more, a regular 
political campaign is carried on at Mt. Holyoke 
every four years! This custom was instituted at 
the time of Lincoln's election, and ever since it has 
excited much outside interest. The college repre- 
sents the nation, and each campus-house a State. 



Mt. Holyoke College gi 

Party organization is modelled directly on political 
lines; the national Republican and national Demo- 
cratic committees order the campaign; State con- 
ventions, regularly called, elect delegates to the 
national. Armed with badges and credentials, the 
delegates, often escorted by enthusiastic constituents, 
present themselves at these conventions held in the 
gymnasium, which is hung with flags and bunting 
for the occasion. The speeches then made are per- 
fectly serious, and reflect a remarkable familiarity 
on the students' part with political figures and 
party protestations. The last time the mock-con- 
vention was held, the New York delegation was 
especially prominent, each of the ten girls which 
made it up having the words New York arranged 
diagonally across their breasts. When the platform 
as adopted at the regular Republican convention was 
read, all listened patiently, duly applauding sound 
money, and loyally hissing democracy and free 
silver. Then this declaration with all its " planks " 
was promptly accepted; and, as the ten o'clock bell 
had sounded, the delegates scampered home to bed. 
Next day a ratification parade was enjoyed, the 
village bass drum, five transparencies, and fifty 
torch-bearers being in line. The captains of the 
evening wore red, white, and blue uniforms, while 
the other girls, who carried Japanese lanterns swing- 



92 The College Girl of America 

ing on sticks, were in sailor suits. Stump speeches 
were made at intervals and red lemonade and pea- 
nut balls were served between the acts. The voting 
itself was done regularly later, ballots being printed, 
booths set up in Assembly Hall, and the specified 
hours observed. 

At Mt. Holyoke, as at Smith, the biggest event 
of each year is the " junior prom," the last function 
of the Washington's Birthday season, to which the 
juniors invite the senior class. The gymnasium, 
transformed for the night, by the decorator's art, 
into a hall of unusual and delicate beauty, is 
thronged by the two classes and their friends. But 
forlorn, indeed, as one may see from this " Junior's 
Lament," in a recent Llamarada, is the girl who 
lacks a man guest on this occasion : 

" My gown is spread out in all its glory, 
Just a frou-frou of ribbons and lace ; 
I've the newest of gloves and of slippers, 
Yet there's nothing but woe on my face. 
There's no joy to be found in my toilet, 
Though my hair has its prettiest curl, 
For to-night is the night of the Junior Prom, 
And I am a manless girl. 

" Through the first and last proms and the supper 
I must sit in my sadness alone, 
Ah, men are uncertain mortals, 
And mine has a heart of stone. 



Mt. Holyoke College 93 

He ' regrets,' and has sent me roses 
And a dear little pin of pearl ; 
But what do I care for such trifles 
When I am a manless girl ? 

" I'd rather be called on in Ethics, 
Or make up my cuts in the gym. 
Or be flunked in my major subject 
And sat on by faculty grim ; 
'Twere better to struggle with daily themes, 
Though they set my poor brain in a whirl, 
Than at the event of the season 
To appear as a manless girl." 

But of course it is in Commencement Week that 
g^aiety at Mt. Holyoke reaches its climax. Two fea- 
tures of this only will be described. But these, 
because peculiar to the college, are distinctly interest- 
ing. The first is the grove exercise on Monday 
morning, when the seniors, all in white, bearing 
ropes of laurel and bunches of forget-me-nots, make 
their way through the stately trees from Safford 
Hall to the quiet grave of the founder of Mt. Hol- 
yoke. With tribute of song and flowers, they place 
their wreaths upon the simple white monument 
which reads on one side: 

"MARY LYON 
" The founder of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and for 
twelve years its principal; a teacher for thirty-five 



94 The College Girl of America 

years, and of more than three thousand pupils. 
Born, February 28th, 1797. Died, March 5th, 1849." 
And on the other side : " There is nothing in the 
universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all 
my duty or shall fail to do it." 

The second annual feature is the step exercise. 
In the late afternoon before Commencement Day, 
the seniors gather upon the steps of Williston Hall, 
revered by college custom as their peculiar property, 
and there, in the presence of friends and under- 
graduates, make known their last will, duly attested 
and signed; sing again familiar college songs, and 
finally, at the last verse of the senior step-song, re- 
move the academic cap, the symbol of their seniority, 
and slowly and reluctantly resign the steps to the 
juniors. To the junior president the senior presi- 
dent, as she passes, gives cap and gown, receiving, in 
return, an armful of her own class flowers. 

Yet the pangs of the beginning of the end have 
really been experienced some time before in senior 
Mountain Day. For more than thirty years each 
class has held its farewell festivity at the Prospect 
House on top of the mountain from which the col- 
lege takes its name. Thither on an afternoon early 
in senior vacation, barges carry the whole class with 
its baggage. And then for a day and a night a 
good time is enjoyed. Toasts follow each meal, and 



Mt. Holyoke College 95 

dancing and " stunts" (the latter comprising selec- 
tions from all the famous enterprises both of the 
class and of its individual members) occupy the 
evening, until the hour comes for the midnight class- 
meeting with its rapid review of college years. 
Next morning the typical Mt. Holyoke girl is up to 
see the sun rise. And it is the thought of this, her 
last glorious experience upon the mountain, that 
the senior carries off with her as the most precious 
of her college memories. 



RADCLIFFE COLLEGE 

The chief claim of Radcliffe College to the atten- 
tion of feminine America lies in the fact that it pro- 
vides for girls Harvard courses conducted by 
Harvard instructors. President Eliot himself has 
been pleased to call the work carried on at Fay 
House, Cambridge, " the most intelligently directed 
effort in the country " for the higher education of 
women. Thus, though in the nature of things 
Radcliffe girls must forego many of the pleasant 
social features that give decided charm tO' student life 
at other colleges for women, they have their reward. 

It is now more than twenty-five years since the 
first steps were taken toward opening the privileges 
of Harvard University to women. In the autumn of 
1878 it was proposed that the instructors of Harvard 
University should unofficially give to women some 
opportunity for systematic study in courses par- 
allel to those of the university. Cambridge, like 
many other communities, had been feeling for some 
years the pulse of the movement toward the higher 

education for women, and in the decade preceding 

96 




A RADCLIFFE GIRL. 



Radcliffe College 97 

1880 the pressure became considerable. This move- 
ment had made such rapid progress in other parts of 
the country as to throw open to girls the privileges 
of many a large men's college. But in New England 
its advocates were not able to force their convictions 
upon the trustees of colleges for men. And Har- 
vard was especially conservative in its attitude 
toward the subject. 

It is not easy to say who first dared suggest that 
women ought to be admitted to full Harvard privi- 
leges. We do know, however, that, before her 
marriage, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore sent in an appli- 
cation to the Harvard corporation for permission 
to study in the college. It goes without saying that 
her request was refused. None the less, efforts to 
break down the barriers were constantly repeated 
during the next forty years. Nothing definite was 
done, however, to smooth the path of the ambitious 
girl student until, in the year 1878, the admirable 
progress made by Miss Leach — who, after under- 
taking systematic work in Cambridge under certain 
Harvard professors, acquitted herself with such 
credit as soon to win the Greek chair at Vassar 
College — showed, with arresting clearness, that 
women could pursue Harvard courses successfully. 
This emboldened a group of ladies and gentleman, 
already interested in the subject, to try and arrange 



98 The College Girl of America 

for women some systematic courses of Harvard in- 
struction. When President Eliot was consulted in 
the matter he not only did not discourage those ad- 
vocating this departure, but was even willing to give 
advice as to methods. Many Harvard professors, 
also, were ready and glad to repeat their courses to 
women. Thus the committee in charge was able to 
issue, Feb. 22, 1879, a preliminary circular, signed 
by Mrs. Louis Agassiz, Mrs. E. W. Gurney, Mrs. 
J. P. Cooke, Mrs. J. B. Greenough, Mrs. Arthur 
Gilman, Miss Alice M. Longfellow, and Miss Lilian 
Horford, — with Mr. Arthur Gilman as secretary, 
— which contained the following statement : 

" A number of professors and other instructors 
of Harvard College have consented to give private 
tuition to properly qualified young women who 
desire to pursue advanced courses of study in Cam- 
bridge. Other professors, whose occupations prevent 
them from giving such tuition, are willing to assist 
young women by advice and by lectures. No ifp- 
struction will he provided of a lower grade than that 
given in Harvard College.'* 

In the promise of this last sentence lies to-day, as 
at the beginning, Radcliffe's chief claim to the con- 
sideration of scholars. From the very first the 
faculty of the new institution — sO' soon to be 
known as the Harvard Annex, in spite of the fact 



Radcliffe College 99 

that it was early provided with the imposing title, 
" The Society for the Collegiate Instruction of 
Women " — comprised many of the best-known 
members of the Harvard faculty. And to-day 
there is scarcely any course offered at Harvard 
which cannot be had at Radcliffe, if desired by even 
a small number of young women. Harvard in- 
structors having thus agreed to give the teaching, 
the practical arrangements for the lectures were 
undertaken by several Cambridge ladies, under the 
lead of Mrs. Louis Agassiz, who, from that time to 
the present, has been the always-efficient head of 
this undertaking. 

As the Annex from the first was to depend for 
its success largely on the benevolence of Harvard 
instructors, it had to be located near the college. 
And as it had a very small sum of money, as well 
as few students at the start, it set up housekeeping 
in two rooms of an unpretending wooden residence 
in the Appian Way, Cambridge. The name of this 
thoroughfare is delightfully satiric, in that the short, 
narrow, scantily-shaded street bears no resemblance 
whatever to the classic Via Appia. But one advan- 
tage it certainly does have, it is within a stone's 
throw of that most important of Cambridge land- 
marks, the Washington Elm. And because its first 



LofC. 



100 The College Girl of America 

home was in the Appian Way, Radchffe now owns 
one of the most valuable corners in Cambridge. 

Probably in all the history of colleges in America 
there could not be found a story so full of colour and 
interest as that of the beginning of this woman's 
college. The bathroom of the little wooden house 
w^as pressed into service as a laboratory for physics, 
students and instructors alike making the best of 
all inconveniences. Because the institution was 
housed with a private family, generous mothering 
was given to the girls when they needed it. And 
every hour of the working-day found the little rooms 
occupied. For though the classes were all small, — 
averaging only three or four members, — there were 
very many classes even at the first. 

In the early days each Annex student knew every 
other student by sight, if not personally, and the 
sociability that resulted from this necessarily close 
contact knit many an enduring bond of friendship. 
It was then practicable for any one of hospitable 
intent to entertain the whole body of students at 
once. " We all," Miss Helen Leah Reed has written,^ 
" have long-lingering remembrances of afternoon 
teas and other pleasant hospitality extended to the 
women by the ladies of the management, or by the 
wives of the professors. In this way the girls were 

"^New England Magazine » 



iRadcliffe College loi 

given many opportunities of meeting their instruct- 
ors socially, and of making the acquaintance of 
Cambridge people in general. No Commencement, 
however brilliant the future of Radcliffe College may 
be, will have for the older graduates the interest of 
that first Commencement, held in the beautiful house 
of those warm and ever-lamented friends of the 
Annex, Professor and Mrs. Gurney. Only second 
in interest was the later Commencement when Mrs. 
Agassiz threw open her house to students. And, in 
1890, Miss Alice Longfellow, who had often before 
entertained Annex students within the charmed 
doors of Craigie House, gave the girls and their 
friends the pleasure of a Commencement in Long- 
fellow's home." 

It was not until the year 1894 that the Annex 
entered into a declared connection with the uni- 
versity. It had by this time become plain that the 
departure had passed the experimental stage, and 
was, therefore, entitled to some formal recognition. 
What shape this should take was, however, a ques- 
tion with many difficulties. No' one wanted to in- 
corporate the Annex bodily into the university, and 
mingle its students with the young men. It was 
plain that the girls must be separately cared for by 
a board composed in part, at least, of women. 
Furthermore, Harvard was unwilling to undertake 



10^ The College Girl of America 

the care of another enterprise. Because of these 
considerations, a separate organization, formally 
independent, and bearing its own title, Radcliffe 
College, was finally evolved. 

The choice of this distinctive name came as the 
result of an interesting coincidence. In 1641 the 
colonists of Massachusetts sent to England a com- 
mittee, which, along with other business for the 
colony, sought contributions in aid of education. 
One member of this committee, the Rev. Thomas 
Weld, inscribed in his report, under the heading, 
" What I received for the College and for the Ad- 
vancement of Learning," this entry : " The lady 
Moulshan gave me for a scholarship £100, the rev- 
enue to be employed that way forever, for which I 
.entered covenant and am bound to have it per- 
formed." By a curious mistake, however, this 
money was paid into the treasury of the colony, and 
it was not until 17 13 that the college succeeded in 
securing entire control of it. Then the whole mat- 
ter slumbered, and the fund fell into desuetude until 
January 30, 1893, when, by vote of the president 
and fellows of Harvard College, the sum of $5,000 
was put apart for the Lady Moulshan scholarship 
fund. The lady herself was identified about this 
time as the wife of Sir Thomas Moulshan, Lord 
Mayor of London, and her maiden name was found 



Radcliffe College 103 

to be Ann Radcliffe. Both she and Sir Thomas, 
her husband, seem to have been remarkably benevo^ 
lent and worthy people. Sir Thomas had been born 
in the latter part of the sixteenth century at Har- 
grave, and had married Ann Radcliffe in 1600. 
Their one daughter, Mary, had died in infancy, and 
the couple, left as they were without children of their 
own, were filled with a great zeal for the advance- 
ment of the education of boys and girls. In 1624 
Sir Thomas was chosen sheriff of London, and in 
1627, having prospered in his business, he founded 
at Hargrave, his birthplace, a chapel and school. 
This school, " for the instruction of youth in gram- 
mar and virtue," is still in existence, and has been 
incorporated in the government school system of 
England. 

Lady Moulshan and her husband lived quietly 
in London from 1608 until 1638, and toward the end 
of this time (1634) the worthy lord mayor was 
knighted at Greenwich. In 1638 he died, leaving 
to his wife half of his fortune after his debts had 
been paid. Thus the wealthy widow could very 
well afford to give Thomas Weld the generous gift 
he bore back with him. But it is far more interest- 
ing that she wished to help Harvard, than that she 
was able to do so. By the original terms of the gift. 
Lady Moulshan was to have had a voice in the ap- 



104 The College Girl of America 

pointment of the beneficiary, but, so far as known, 
she never took advantage of this right. She was 
buried Nov. i, 1661, beside her husband, in the vault 
of St. Christopher, within that square mile in Lon- 
don which may be said to dictate the finances of the 
world. A wise, prudent, and generous woman was 
Ann Radcliffe, and it is a fitting tribute to her mem- 
ory that two hundred and fifty years after her 
scholarship gift to Harvard, the first ever made to an 
American college by a woman, the Harvard Annex 
should have adopted for its title her maiden name. 
The seal of the girls' college, it is further interesting 
to note, bears a very close relationship to the Rad- 
cliffe arms. 

Provided with a name, and having already ob- 
tained a local habitation in beautiful Fay House, — 
purchased in 1886 when the hired rooms on Appian 
Way no longer sufficed for the growing classes, — 
the college was now ready really to fill the place for 
which it had amply qualified. It was inevitable that 
its social life should now expand and become con- 
stantly more gracious. For Fay House is exceed- 
ingly picturesque, and, though not colonial, has 
every appearance of so being. One room has an 
historic value even for Harvard students! For 
within its walls Rev. Samuel Gilman, while a guest 
of the house, composed, in 1836, the words of the 



Radcliffe College 105 

song " Fair Harvard," which, set to an old Eng- 
hsh melody, was at once adopted as the Harvard 
College song. Of other treasured memories Fay- 
House has many. Edward Everett lived here for 
a time, and here the granddaughter of Chief Justice 
Dana, our first minister to Russia, kept a boarding 
and day school for young ladies, numbering among 
her pupils the sisters of James Russell Lowell and 
many another member of distinguished Cambridge 
families. Lowell himself and Edmund Dana at- 
tended here for a term as a special privilege. Sophia 
Dana was married in the house August 22, 1827, 
by the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes to Mr. 
George Ripley, with whom she afterward took an 
active part in the Brook Farm colony. 

Delightful reminiscences of Fay House have been 
furnished us by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 
who, as a boy, was often in and out of the place 
visiting his aunt, Mrs. Channing, who lived here 
with her son, William Henry Channing, the well- 
known antislavery orator. Here Higginson, as a 
youth, used to listen with keenest pleasure to the 
singing of his cousin, Lucy Channing, especially 
when the song she chose was *' The Mistletoe Hung 
in the Castle Hall," the story of a bride shut 
up in a chest. " I used firmly to believe," the genial 
colonel confessed one evening to Radcliffe girls, in 



io6 The College Girl of America 

reviving for us his memories of the house, " that 
there was a bride shut up in the wall of Fay House 
— and there may be to-day for all I know." Very 
happy times were those which the young Wentworth 
Higginson, then a college boy, living with his mother 
at Vaughan House (now one of the Radcliffe build- 
ings also), was privileged to share with Maria Fay 
and her friends. Who of us does not envy him the 
memory of that Christmas party in 1841, when 
there were gathered in Fay House, among others, 
Maria White, Lowell's beautiful fiancee; Levi 
Thaxter, afterward the husband of Celia Thaxter; 
Leverett Saltonstall, Mary Story, and William Story, 
the sculptor? How pleasant it must have been to 
join in the famous charades of that circle of talented 
young people, to partake of refreshments in the 
quaint dining-room, to dance the Virginia reel and 
galop in the beautiful oval parlour which then, as 
to-day, expressed ideally the acme of charming hos- 
pitality! ^ 

From among the present writer's own memories 
of pretty happenings in Fay House parlour, the fol- 
lowing is selected as typical of Radcliffe life: 
During one of Duse's tours of this country, the 
famous actress came out, as many a distinguished 
personage does, to drink a cup of tea with Mrs. 

» " The Romance of Old New England Roof-Trees." 



Radcliffe College 107 

Agassiz in the stately old parlour, where Mrs. 
Whitman's famous portrait of the first president 
of Radcliffe College vies in attractiveness with the 
living reality, graciously presiding over the Wednes- 
day afternoon teacups. As it happened, there was 
scant attendance at the tea on this day of Duse's 
visit. She had not been expected. And so it fell 
out that some two or three girls who could speak 
French or Italian were privileged to do the honours 
of the occasion to the great actress whom they had 
long worshipped from afar. Duse was in one of her 
most charming moods, and she listened with marked 
attention to her hostesses' laboured explanations 
concerning the college and its historic home. 

From the enthusiastic girl-students' point of view, 
however, the best of it all came when the dark-eyed 
Italienne said farewell. For, as she entered her 
carriage — to which she had been escorted by this 
little group — she took from her belt a beautiful 
bouquet of roses, camellias, and violets, and, as the 
smart coachman flicked the impatient horses with 
his whip, threw the girls the precious flowers. Those 
who caught a camellia felt, of course, especially de- 
lighted, for it was as the Dame aux Camellias that 
Duse had been winning for weeks the plaudits of 
admiring Boston. My own share of the largesse 
consisted of a few fresh, sweet violets, which I still 



io8 The College Girl of America 

have tucked away somewhere, together with one of 
the great actress's photographs bearing the date of 
her visit to RadcHffe. 

With another distinguished foreign actress, no 
less a person than Bernhardt, my college memories 
are also very pleasurably connected. For it was dur- 
ing my sophomore year at Radcliffe that the wonder- 
ful Sarah, at the suggestion of the French depart- 
ment of the university, gave a special performance 
of Racine's " Phedre " for the Harvard men and 
Radcliffe girls who had just been reading the play 
in their French courses. Never have I shared in a 
more brilliant evening. To see a tragedy so sublime 
as is this one performed by the leading actress of the 
world, just at a time when every word of the text, 
every nuance of the author's meaning is familiar, 
implies such intellectual delight as comes to one but 
seldom in a lifetime. Something like the same 
exj>erience was vouchsafed to Radcliffe when 
" Athalie " was given at Sanders Theatre with the 
Mendelssohn music supplied by the Boston Sym- 
phony Orchestra. On this occasion, moreover, the 
girls' college had a very vital stake in the perform- 
ance, for two of the prominent parts were taken by 
Radcliffe undergraduates. 

Now it is because Radcliffe is always given a 
generous share of such splendid opportunities as 




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Radcliffe College 109 

these, — besides having her part in the work- 
aday aspect of Harvard's Hfe, — that the college 
is not in the least disposed to quarrel with the uni- 
versity. Some anxiety has been expressed by eager 
advocates of women's education because Harvard 
has never made a formal contract with Radcliffe, 
specifying in what way it will exercise its powers, 
enumerating the privileges it will give to women, 
or at least fixing a time during which it will surely 
abide by the present arrangement. But the want 
of definite articles of agreement is by no means a 
ground of apprehension to those who know the his- 
tory of the Annex, and appreciate how fully it is 
already a part of the university, through adoption by 
the faculty. When, some twelve months ago, Mrs. 
Louis Agassiz felt obliged, because of advancing 
years, to resign the active presidency of Radcliffe, — 
which office she had so graciously and ably filled, — 
it was the most natural thing in the world for Dean 
Le Baron Briggs of the Harvard faculty to be 
chosen President Briggs of Radcliffe College; nor 
was there any question whatever about his acceptance 
of the honour and responsibility. Though the cor- 
poration of Harvard College has never agreed to 
bestow the Harvard degree upon Radcliffe, the 
President of Harvard University is always present 
at Radcliffe Commencements, and the degree which 



no The College Girl of America 

is bestowed bears the Harvard, as well as the Rad- 
cliffe, seal. Moreover, President Eliot there certi- 
fies in formal Latin over his own signature not only 
that the student receiving this distinction is qualified 
to be admitted to the rights of a Bachelor of Arts, 
but that '' the degree is in all respects equivalent to 
the one to which, in like case, we admit our [Har- 
vard] students." In numerous ways the interests 
of the two colleges are clearly recognized as iden- 
tical. Examinations, exactly alike for both institu- 
tions, are held in the two colleges at the same time. 
The themes of Harvard men are sometimes read at 
Radcliffe, and on at least one occasion the theme of 
a Radcliffe girl was read to a class of Harvard men, 
and by them cheered to the echo. The Harvard 
Graduates^ Magadne gives large space to Radcliffe 
College affairs, and at the present time, because of 
peculiar circumstances, one Harvard College scholar- 
ship is actually being used for the education of a girl 
at Radcliffe. 

The social and academic life which Radcliffe 
shares with Harvard is but small, however, in com- 
parison with the student interests and diversions 
of the girls by themselves. The Idler Club, to which 
all Radcliffe girls belong, has theatricals every two 
weeks; the Emmanuel Gub presents one or two 
original plays a year on the stage of Fay House; 



Radcliffe College iii 

there are annual athletic meets in the fine new gym- 
nasium (equipped with a magnificent swimming- 
pool), and each Thursday afternoon there is a tea 
at Bertram Hall, the college's one hall of residence. 
Of hockey, tennis, and basket-ball, the college has 
its own good share. The spacious and imposing 
new Students' House, the college's memorial to Mrs. 
Agassiz, which is now approaching completion, will 
provide a lunch-room and ample accommodations 
for clubs, as well as a real theatre. This last acquisi- 
tion will seem strange indeed to those girls who, all 
through their undergraduate years, produced plays 
on the cramped Auditorium stage, where the problem 
of adequate setting, as well as of sufficient space 
in which to act, was an ever-present one. Still the 
very limitations of the old days resulted in aston- 
ishing exhibitions of resource. Once, when there 
was a woodland scene to be staged, and no sylvan 
scenery at hand, the girls on the Idler committee of 
the day went themselves to a neighbouring bit of 
forest, chopped down some evergreens, and rode 
triumphantly back to Cambridge in the express- 
wagon which bore their booty. Even when con- 
fronted with the necessity of providing the interior 
of a Chinese palace upon an allowance of $2.50, they 
were not nonplussed. The '* palace " was a success, 
which proves again that primitive conditions evoke 



112 The College Girl of America 

their own acts of power. Class pride, scarcely less 
than necessity, is a mother of invention. 

In recent years a very interesting new depar- 
ture has been introduced into the Radcliffe social 
calendar in the form of an annual original operetta. 
The first of these musical productions, " The 
Orientals," was given in the spring of 1898, Jose- 
phine Sherwood, '99, having supplied the music and 
the lyrics, and Katherine Berry, '98, the librettO'. 
The second operetta, " The Princess Perfection," 
was written entirely by Josephine Sherwood, '99. 
The third operetta, " The Copper Complication," 
was written by Mabel Wheeler Daniels and Rebecca 
Lane Hooper, 1900, and this same excellent partner- 
ship was responsible, a year later, for another opera, 
" The Court of Hearts." The two last-named works 
have since been produced many times throughout the 
United States, Miss Daniels and Miss Hooper hav- 
ing quite accidentally hit, as has since been shown, 
upon an unworked field, — i. e., operetta suitable 
for amateur production. It was in the opera of 
1902, however, — by Florence E. Heath and Grace 
Hollingsworth, then undergraduates, — that the 
high-water mark of achievement in stage business 
and effective acting was reached. 

Yet that there is far more work than play at 
Radclifife, is evident from the fact that the majority 



Radcliffe College 113 

of the graduates take their degrees " with distinc- 
tion." Usually from thirty to forty per cent, are 
made bachelors of art, cum laude, ten per cent. 
magna cum laude, and one or two per cent, summa 
cum laude. Though it has not always been so-, more 
than half of the Radcliffe graduates nowadays en- 
gage in some form of work. Almost fifty per cent, of 
them are teachers, though a fair proportion are doing 
very good work along literary lines, and some few 
are engaged in secretarial and social occupations. 

It is worth noting that Radcliffe students, while 
they have never been subject to such restraining rules 
for personal conduct as prevail at many colleges, 
have always conducted themselves with quiet, lady- 
like dignity. No word of gossip or scandal from 
the outside world has ever been visited upon any 
member of the college. Though the girls live their 
life in a town swarming with men students, they 
have always been able to pursue their pleasures and 
their studies without any kind of annoyance or 
any undue restriction. 

There is this year (1904) graduating from Rad- 
cliffe a young woman who will probably do more to 
make the college known in history than all the other 
members of the alumnae combined. Miss Helen 
Keller, who, though blind, deaf, and dumb, has suc- 
cessfully pursued the courses leading to the degree 



114 The College Girl of America 

of Bachelor of Arts, is, indeed, a graduate of whom 
RadcHffe may well be proud. In her senior year, 
as in one other undergraduate year. Miss Keller was 
elected vice-president of her class, a pretty tribute, 
though but a just one, to a girl who has obtained 
her liberal education only by overcoming almost in- 
surmountable barriers of circumstance. In this con- 
nection it is interesting to read one of Miss Keller s 
daily themes, written by her in the fall of 1900, and 
reprinted from the Radcliffe Magazine of March, 
1901 : 

" There are disadvantages, I find, in going to 
college. The one I feel most is lack of time. I 
used to have time to think, to reflect — my mind and 
I. We would sit together of an evening and listen 
to the inner melody of the spirit which one hears 
only in leisure moments, when the words of some 
loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that 
had been silent until then. But in college there is no 
time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes 
to college to learn, not to think, it seems. When 
one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the 
dearest pleasures — solitude, books, and imagination 
— outside with the whispering pines and the sunlit, 
odorous woods. I suppose I ought to find some 
comfort In the thought that I am laying up treasures 
for future enjoyment; but I am improvident enough 



Radcliffe College 115 

to prefer present joy to hoarding treasures against 
a rainy day. It is impossible, I think, to read four or 
five different books in different languages, and treat- 
ing of widely different subjects, in one day, and not 
lose sight of the very ends for which one reads, — 
mental stimulus and enrichment. When one reads 
hurriedly and promiscuously, one's mind becomes 
encumbered with a lot of choice bric-a-brac for 
which there is very little use. Just now my mind is 
SO' full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair 
of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I 
enter the region that was the kingdom of my mind, 
I feel like the proverbial bull in the china closet. A 
thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing 
about my head like hailstones, and when I try to 
escape them, theme goblins and college-nixies of all 
sorts pursue me until I wish — oh, may I be forgiven 
the wicked wish ! — that I might smash the idols 
I came to worship." 

This theme, produced during Miss Keller's fresh- 
man days, doubtless very well expresses what 
many another freshman has felt during her first 
months of college life. But in Helen Keller's 
case, and, indisputably, in that of hundreds of other 
girls as well, four years at Radcliffe have provided 
opportunity second to none to " put the mind in 
order." 



ii6 The College Girl of America 

The one really gay and beautiful affair in Rad- 
cliffe's year is the Class Day Reception, which always 
takes the form of a garden-party. By the aid of 
perhaps a thousand Japanese lanterns strung along 
the fence, festooned across the canvas-carpeted lawn, 
and suspended from the trees, the appearance of 
pKDsitive spaciousness is given to the rather meagre 
campus. The soft glow of the lights, the individual 
tables spread under the stars, the good music by the 
College Glee Club on the balcony of the adjacent 
'' gym," or from a bandstand erected in the yard for 
the purpose, ideally combine to make a pleasant even- 
ing. Then for the first time, perhaps, the Harvard 
youths hear that characteristic tale of the Only Man : 

" Once on a time a Harvard man 
Got a card to a Radcliffe tea ; 
And, of course, he was, as all men are, 
As pleased as pleased could be. 
He was a man who had always said 
That nothing could make him quail. 
He said that a summons from the Dean 
Would not even turn him pale. 

" When the day arrived, he dressed himself 
In a way both fine and neat, 
And with a rose in his buttonhole 
He walked down Garden Street. 
But when he came in at the door 
He almost turned and ran. 
For there among four hundred girls 
He was the only man. 



Radcliffe College 117 

" He had faced the Yale rush line; 
He'd been captain of the nine ; 
He was not afraid to dine 
Upon the new Memorial plan. 
But oh, he had to flee 
When, at a Radcliffe tea. 
He was the only only man." 

On Class Day the graduating girls receive in 
groups of twos and threes in the various lecture- 
halls, which, by the aid of cushions, draperies, light 
furniture and flowers, have been transformed for 
the nonce into quite wwacademic-looking rooms. On 
this one occasion, too, men are permitted to share 
the dancing privilege at Radcliffe. 

Formal Commencement exercises come three or 
four days later in Sanders Theatre. Then the presi- 
dents of Radcliffe and Harvard sit side by side on the 
platform; Radcliffe's Academic Board is escorted 
to the hall by Harvard faculty members, and Rad- 
cliffe's graduating class receives degrees which Har- 
vard's president has signed and stamped with 
Harvard's seal. 



BRYN MAWR COLLEGE 

It has often been said of Bryn Mawr that the place 
itself is so beautiful that merely to be there is an 
education. As a matter of fact it is the one woman's 
college in the country which is architecturally impres- 
sive. With the exception of the original adminis- 
tration building, — named Taylor Hall, after the col- 
lege's founder, — the various lecture and residence 
halls are all of Elizabethan architecture, and individ- 
ually, no less than as parts of a whole, have distinct 
nobility of form. The word Bryn Mawr means 
high hill, and the college was named after the town 
five miles west in the suburbs of Philadelphia, on the 
main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Its site 
is four hundred and twenty feet above sea-level, in 
the midst of a beautiful rolling country, made easily 
accessible in every direction by good roads. The 
college grounds cover fifty-two acres, and include 
lawns, tennis-courts, a large athletic-field, and 
a skating-pond. 

If first seen on a quietly brooding spring day, 

when the ground is blue with violets, and the blue 

ii8 




A BRYN MAWR GIRL. 



Bryn Mawr College 119 

and white " fair weather " signal flags are flying 
from Dalton Hall, the beauty of Bryn Mawr is a 
thing never to be forgotten. Far off in the dis- 
tance, over the undulating hills, is a stately white 
marble residence with red tiled roof; in the middle 
distance is an attractive group of professors' houses ; 
somewhat nearer stands out " Low Buildings," 
where the members of the faculty have cozy apart- 
ments and live a very serene, happy life; directly 
before one are Merion, Radnor, Denbigh, and Pem- 
broke, the last-named an imposing structure of gray 
stone, with a central arch through which one views 
a very pleasant vista of shady green. The newest 
residence hall is Rockefeller, just completed this 
spring. It adjoins Pembroke Hall West, and its 
central tower, known as the Owl Gate, forms, for 
foot-passengers, the permanent entrance to the 
college. 

Bryn Mawr College was founded by Dr. Joseph 
W. Taylor, of Burlington, New Jersey, a man who, 
though a bachelor, had all his life taken a great inter- 
est in the education of women. He died January 
18, 1880, leaving the greater portion of his estate 
for the establishment and maintenance of this in- 
stitution of advanced learning. It was his earnest 
desire that the college should be pervaded by the 
principles of Christianity held by Friends, which he 



120 The College Girl of America 

believed to be the same in substance as those taught 
by the early Christians, and an endeavour has ac- 
cordingly been made to promote this end. In the 
social life of the college to-day interesting little 
traces of its Friend origin are discerned; there is 
never any dancing at Bryn Mawr, for instance. 
And its chapel has about it nothing that would dis- 
tinguish the room from an ordinary lecture-hall. 

Before actual work was begun at Bryn Mawr, 
the organization of Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley 
was carefully studied. To the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, however, is due the academic system which 
was finally adopted, a scheme of major and minor 
electives in fixed combination, to which Bryn Mawr 
gave the name of the group system. In the spring 
of 1885 the first programme was issued, and that 
same autumn the college regularly opened for in- 
struction. From the start Bryn Mawr has main- 
tained distinctly high rank. No college women in 
the country are more thoroughly trained and have a 
more scholarly type of mind than those who take 
degrees here. Having said which, one may perhaps 
pass at once to the institution's social side, even 
though, in so doing, one does run the risk of not 
giving a large enough degree of prominence to the 
thing which, above all others, makes Bryn Mawr 
what it is, i. e., its really austere academic life. 



Bryn Mawr College 121 

The only kind of hazing ever indulged in at Bryn 
Mawr comes early in the year, when the sophomores 
try to spirit away the new caps and gowns which the 
proud freshmen have just purchased. The game 
is for the freshmen to find their precious robes. 
When, therefore, they are able to come in to chapel 
dressed in their newly-attained habiliments, they are 
warmly congratulated by the president " upon hav- 
ing successfully matriculated." The girls never 
renew their caps and gowns, a senior being justly 
proud of a well-worn cap and a rusty gown. Even 
at Commencement the same old gowns are worn 
over fresh white duck skirts and white shirt-waists. 

A question very commonly addressed to the Bryn 
Mawr girl by a stranger at the college is, " Why 
do you have a lantern on your college pin?" 
Acquaintance with the customs and life of the place 
makes one concede, however, that the lantern is a 
singularly appropriate emblem to be so used. For 
almost the first association an entering student has 
is with lanterns. And the lantern is likewise linked 
with her final impressions of her Alma Mater. 

One of the oldest and most characteristic customs 
is the Presentation of the Lanterns.^ The ex-fresh- 
men then greet the incoming girls with a song, and 
present each one with a " lantern to light her steps 

* Susan G. Walker in the Century Magazine, 



122 The College Girl of America 

through the unknown ways of college life," and 
especially through the mazes of the group system. 
Sometimes much sage advice is given with the light, 
and once the unfortunate freshmen won their lan- 
terns only after passing an impromptu oral exami- 
nation. The form of the affair differs with the 
character and resources of the class giving it ; but as 
preparations for it are begun in the freshmen year, 
the offering is usually both clever and original. 

The farewell lantern celebration is at the alumnae 
supper given on Commencement evening. Here a 
speech of welcome is made to the new alumnae, and 
at the close of the festivities the lights are turned 
low, and the lanterns, standing at each place, are 
lighted from one large lantern that has been burn- 
ing throughout the evening at the head of the 
table. Holding the lighted lanterns, the alumnae 
sing the old college song. Then they slowly go out, 
leaving their bright lights still burning on the 
deserted board. 

A very pretty old English custom has recently 
been revived at Bryn Mawr. Early on the morning 
of May-day the students search the woods and fields 
near the college for wild flowers, with which they 
fill dainty baskets that they deposit, a little later, 
at the doors of favoured friends. At one particular 
May-time, a few years ago, Bryn Mawr conducted 



Bryn Mawr College 123 

festivities appropriate to the season upon a huge, 
though highly artistic, scale. There were then no 
less than four May-poles, as well as a number of 
plays to raise money for the students' building. 
And, following the old English May custom, every- 
body — except guests — was in costume, beggars, 
peddlers, fortune-tellers, and merry Maid Marians, 
chaffering gaily on the mossy greensward with all 
whom they encountered. The gowns were carefully 
thought out and were historically correct, a feeling 
for history so tempering the desire for fun that noth- 
ing anachronistic was permitted in the day's exer- 
cises. As a natural consequence this May-day is 
still remembered with pride by the friends of the 
college. 

Short as has been the life of Bryn Mawr, there is 
already connected with it a wealth of interest and 
tradition. Each class has a seal, a dolphin, a beaver, 
or some other animal, which every member wears 
in ring form, and in the use of the lanterns not a 
little originality and ingenuity have been displayed. 
The first lantern, pointed out to the visitor of to-day 
with impressive reverence by the undergraduate, 
was a plain little candlestick. From then up to the 
present time, every sort of lantern has been used. 
All the residence halls — except the newest one — 
bear the names of Welsh counties, a thing which 



124 "^^^ College Girl of America 

of itself gives charm and atmosphere to Bryn Mawr. 
The views from these halls are in every case fine and 
inspiring. The students' rooms in the halls are 
many of them arranged in double suites, two bed- 
rooms and a common study. In Pembroke the 
suites are particularly attractive, as are also the par- 
lour and the reception-room. The dining-room at 
Pembroke is over the imposing central arch, and, 
finished as it is with dark wood and equipped with 
handsome high-backed chairs and dainty table fit- 
tings, it forcefully impresses one as quite all that such 
a room in a girls' college should be. At the end of 
the room are two fireplaces, one on each side. Over 
these are carved respectively the legends Ung ie 
Seruiray and Veritatem Dilexi. The table at Bryn 
Mawr is uniformly good, dinner being, of course, 
the meal of the day. This is a social occasion, and all 
the girls dress for it as carefully as if they were in 
their own homes. The college gown, which is the 
regular academic garb, is never worn then. 

This year, for the first time, the tuition fee is $200 
for undergraduate students. Other expenses bring 
the price of a year at Bryn Mawr up to not less than 
$500 for undergraduates and $400 for graduate 
students. Here, however, as in many other of the 
leading educational institutions for women, there 
are ways of helping girls to help themselves. Some 



Bryn Mawr College 125 

of these ways are exceedingly interesting. A lunch 
room in the gymnasium is conducted by students; 
there are electrical lieutenants in every building, 
whose duty it is to regulate the matter of lights; 
a college book-shop has students for clerks, and a 
captain of the fire-brigade directs drills for each 
residence hall. When old Denbigh was burned a 
few years ago, the girls had been so carefully 
trained in fire fighting that they manned the hose 
very effectively. This came as a result of con- 
stant drill, for at Bryn Mawr whenever the fire- 
bell rings, the girls must run to the room in 
danger, wearing on their faces towels which have 
been dipped into a basin of water. They then pass 
buckets and see to the hose in a thoroughly profes- 
sional fashion. 

As would be expected of a sane, broad college 
like Bryn Mawr, hampering boarding-school regula- 
tions are absent. The train service between the 
town and Philadelphia is excellent, and whenever an 
opera or a good play is to be seen, the girls are en- 
couraged to go in town for that purpose. If they are 
away for overnight, they register their address ; and, 
naturally, they do not go in town in the evening 
without a chaperon. But for the most, the girls are 
self-governing, and do the right and the proper 
thing because they wish to. Chapel, held every day at 



126 The College Girl of America 

a quarter before nine, is voluntary, but the students 
go in large numbers. On Sundays the girls attend 
such churches in the neighbourhood as they may 
elect, and every other Wednesday evening there is 
a sermon at college by some distinguished clergy- 
man, the alternate Wednesdays being given over 
to a Christian Union service, conducted by the 
students themselves. 

Gymnasium attendance is required at Bryn Mawr, 
as are also four periods of exercise each week. One 
hour only of this is class drill, hov^ever, the rest of 
the time being divided between golf, riding, swim- 
ming, hockey, or basket-ball, all of which count as 
exercise. Interest in this last-named sport is very 
keen. A silver lantern was proudly pointed out to 
me as the trophy for which the basket-ball teams are 
now eagerly contending. I saw, too, a very pretty 
basket-ball game that same afternoon, — 1905, the 
devotees of the red, contesting with 1907, gay in 
green ribbons, for the honours. And a very charm- 
ing picture the girls made in their corduroy sailor 
suits with white collars and white belts, as they 
scrambled for the elusive ball! Their coach was 
a tall, and very pretty, girl, whose red coat stood 
out brilliantly against the vivid green of the spring 
verdure. Grouped around on the edge of the field 
wer^ dozens of enthusiastic maidens gowned all in 



Bryn Mawr College 127 

white duck, lustily cheering when the 1907's made 
a goal, and becoming very excited when the other 
side scored. It had never occurred to me before that 
basket-ball was a picturesque game. 

Undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr is all over 
by four in the afternoon, so that there is a very fair 
margin of leisure for the girls to enjoy. This they 
do in fine weather by means of teas on the lawn, 
the wardens of the various halls being " at home " 
on different days to the student body. Singing on 
the steps of Taylor Hall (which belong to the 
seniors) is another favourite diversion, a thing not 
only delightful in itself, but useful, too, as practice 
for the garden-party occasion, which crowns the 
senior year, and for the farewell to the halls and 
the faculty which comes after the seniors' last lecture. 

Into the last week of the college year are crowded 
many gaieties. The first of these is the senior class 
supper, a distinctly impressive occasion when every- 
thing that has marked the career of the outgoing 
class is brought up and enjoyed, old jokes repeated, 
old stories retold, and every endeavour made to 
mitigate the sadness which must otherwise attend 
a farewell. At the end, the class, standing, sings 
its own song and gives its cheer. When the feast 
is all over, some of the fragments that remain are 
sent to the honorary members of the class, — those 



128 The College Girl of America 

of the faculty who first came to Bryn Mawr the 
year that class entered college. At high noon, on 
the day before Commencement, a breakfast is given 
to the seniors by the other students. This is held 
in the gymnasium, decorated with daisies and boughs 
set off by the yellow and white of the class banners. 
The toasts are followed by chorus singing of college 
songs. Then, before college breaks up, the seniors 
hand over to the lower classes their duties and 
responsibilities, and make a tour of the buildings, 
which they serenade in turn. And on Commence- 
ment morning, as a last loving attention, the fresh- 
men make for their departing big sisters countless 
daisy chains, which are used to decorate the chapel 
and the hallways. 

For the Garden Party of Commencement Week, 
the most ornate festivity of the college year, the 
girls all have beautiful new gowns. Their friends 
from outside are invited out in large numbers, the 
buildings are illuminated, the trees hung with 
Japanese lanterns, and Bryn Mawr is for the nonce 
transformed into the gayest of fairy-lands. The 
evening always ends by singing on Taylor House 
steps, and the song which forms the last number on 
the programme is that called " Our Gracious Inspira- 
tion," written by Caroline Foulke, of the class of 

'96: 



Bryn Mawr College 129 

" Our gracious inspiration, 
Our guiding star, 
Mistress and mother, 
All hail, Bryn Mawr ! 

" Goddess of wisdom, 
Thy torch divine 
Doth beacon thy votaries 
To thy shrine. 

" And we, thy daughters, 
Would thy vestals be, 
Thy torch to consecrate 
Eternally." 



BARNARD COLLEGE 

Commanding a glorious view of the Hudson, 
just across the street from the beautiful campus of 
Columbia College, and only a stone's throw from 
the stately white marble sarcophagus where the 
greatest general of our Civil War lies entombed, 
Barnard College may be held to have a truly splendid 
site, even if it does lie within the bounds of New 
York City. Not a few other advantages belong 
uniquely to this college. For, though it is in pos- 
session of a charter and of an administrative auton- 
omy of its own, from the beginning Barnard has 
had the advantage of a singularly close academic 
connection with Columbia. Its experience in rela- 
tion to the university has differed so widely from 
that of any other affiliated college, that to understand 
it one needs to trace somewhat at length the his- 
tory of the institution's rise. 

Fourteen years after the opening of Vassar, and 
six years after Girton began its life, the late Presi- 
dent Barnard of Columbia set forth in his annual 
report (1879) some reasons in favour of admitting 

130 



Barnard College 131 

young women to the institution of which he was 
head. In his next report he remarked sadly that 
these reasons had " failed to attract the serious at- 
tention of the trustees." None the less, each year 
he followed up his first attack with fresh arguments, 
and, as women's education in other communities 
advanced by strides, he proceeded to challenge 
objectors to show cause why Columbia should not 
make her resources available to all the youth in her 
environment. 

What President Barnard wanted was uncompro- 
mising coeducation. He objected to isolated colleges 
for women because " they cannot, or at least in gen- 
eral will not, give instruction of equal value, though 
it may be the same in name, with that furnished to 
young men in the long-established and well-endowed "*tt 
colleges of highest repute in the country." And the 
affiliated college, of which Girton was at that time 
the best-known example, seemed to him " a cum- 
brous method of conveying by conduit a stream 
whose fountainhead should be free to all." Every 
year until 1883 he continued to represent to the 
trustees and to the public that Columbia was des- 
tined to become a university, and that a university 
merits its name, not merely by providing training 
for all human faculties, but by putting its resources 
as well at the disposal of all qualified persons. 



132 The College Girl of America 

Yet not improbably even these strenuous efforts 
in behalf of women's education would have failed 
to bear fruit, had not several hundred citizens of 
New York and vicinity supported President Barnard 
by handing to the Columbia trustees — in 1883 — a 
memorial asking that women be admitted to Colum- 
bia College on the same terms as men. The result of 
this action was that, though the education side of 
the petition was refused, the board did so far unbend 
as to promise " suitable academic honours and dis- 
tinctions to any women who should prove that they 
were entitled to the same." Doubtless this result 
was highly unsatisfactory to those presenting the 
memorial; nor can it have been encouraging to the 
president. His ardent wish was to give young 
women an education ; " suitable academic honours " 
was quite another thing. What the trustees had said 
was in effect: We are not prepared to educate 
girls; if, however, they can contrive to educate 
themselves, we will certify to the fact. 

The president's next report contained no allusion 
to the question, and that for 1884 dealt with it 
only in a brief paragraph, stating that six women 
had availed themselves of the privilege offered in the 
" Collegiate Course for Women." The system thus 
inaugurated pleased no one, for the women found 
it extremely difficult to obtain, outside the college, 



Barnard College 133 

such training as would enable them to pass the 
college examinations; and the college authorities 
became reluctant to confer, on the strength of ex- 
aminations only, degrees which commonly implied 
daily class-room training as well. So after these 
half a dozen women had succeeded in getting de- 
grees, the system was superseded. It then became 
plain to all interested that, unless they would drop 
below their ideals, it was necessary to provide for 
women an education identical with, or equivalent to, 
that provided by Columbia for men. With this pur- 
pose in view, Barnard College was organized in 
1889. 

It is to be noticed that Barnard's relation to Co- 
lumbia has developed in opposite order to that cus- 
tomary in such cases. Girton and the other English 
colleges for women began by securing the benefit 
of instruction by members of the universities with 
which they were affiliated. The Harvard Annex in 
this country pursued the same policy. But while all 
these colleges are apparently as far as ever from 
obtaining the degrees of their universities, Barnard 
girls get Columbia recognition and reward. Co- 
lumbia had at the start gotten at the root of the 
whole matter by conceding the degrees to women 
who could earn them. And having once done this 
it naturally felt obliged to see to it that the value 



134 The College Girl of America 

of its degrees should not be impaired. This feeling 
has been constantly operative in the college, to the 
end that women at Barnard are now receiving the 
liberal education for which the broad-minded Co- 
lumbia president, whose name the women's college 
bears, had long striven with so much persistence, 
chivalry, and logic. 

The first chairman of Barnard's trustees, and the 
man who, from the beginning until his death in 
1895, was the chief spokesman for the college to 
the community, was the Rev. Dr. Arthur Brooks, 
whose talents and weight with people of many 
different ways of thinking gave at once a certain 
prestige to this work. He used to say at public meet- 
ings in Barnard's interest that in New York a 
woman could obtain the satisfaction of every want, 
wish, or whim, save one — she could not get an 
education if she wanted it. This was so true and 
so effective that funds for his project were soon 
forthcoming. 

To meet the first expenses of the college, a number 
of persons pledged themselves to the payment of 
small annual sums for four years, and with this very 
modest guarantee a house was rented, in 1889, at 
343 Madison Avenue, seven instructors were selected 
from the Columbia faculty, and fourteen regular 
and twelve special students enrolled. The second 



Barnard College 135 

year nine additional instructors were appointed, and 
the classes began to increase in numbers. At the 
end of the four years of experiment, the college 
found itself free from debt, with a graduating class 
of eight, with seven juniors, ten sophomores, twenty- 
seven freshmen, and thirty-three special students. 

By this time, however, one hundred thousand 
dollars had been received from Mrs. Van Wyck 
Brinckerhoff for a building fund, and the present site 
purchased. Before the autumn of 1897, two build- 
ings were completed, namely, Milbank Hall, the gift 
of Mrs. A. A. Anderson, and Brinckerhoff Hall, 
paid for chiefly with the fund already mentioned. 
In the following year Fiske Hall was added by the 
generosity of Mrs. Josiah M. Fiske. In October, 
1898, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars was 
given to the college by an anonymous friend, and 
invested as an endowment fund. From time to time, 
too, scholarships have been founded, so that now 
some forty thousand dollars are available for this 
purpose. 

Numerically, Barnard's growth has quite kept pace 
with its financial prosperity; it has now five hun- 
dred students on its lists. Thus the Barnard contin- 
gent forms a very considerable fraction of the total 
number of undergraduates under the care of the 
Columbia instructors, — so large a number, indeed, 



136 The College Girl of America 

that beginning with the fall of 1904 all the instruc- 
tion for women leading to the degree of Bachelor 
of Arts is to be given separately in Barnard College. 
Women who have taken their first degree will, how- 
ever, be accepted by Columbia on the same terms as 
men, as candidates for the degrees of Master of Arts, 
and Doctor of Philosophy, and the library of the 
university will continue to be open to all women 
students upon the same terms as men. 

For the rather complicated scheme of instruction 
which has worked so well at Barnard, Mrs. George 
Haven Putnam is very largely responsible. Mrs. 
Putnam, when Emily Jane Smith, was first dean of 
Barnard, and the system was planned out by her and 
by President Seth Low, Columbia's head at the time. 
The close and amicable relationship thus established 
between the President of Columbia and the Dean 
of Barnard still obtains. The present incumbent of 
this important place at the women's college Is Laura 
Drake Gill, A. M., whose academic training was 
received at Smith College and at foreign universities, 
and who has had since her student days a large and 
varied experience in executive work. Possessed of 
charming manners as well as of deep culture. Miss 
Gill is exceptionally well fitted to perform the deli- 
cate and difficult duties of dean in an " affiliated " 
institution. 



Barnard College 137 

The social life of the two colleges as such is dis- 
tinctly separate. There are the men's clubs, and 
the women's clubs, each with their own officers 
and their own meetings. Barnard, like Columbia, 
has class organizations, literary bodies, fraterni- 
ties, and Greek letter societies. It gives, too, its 
plays, — to which no men are admitted, — and 
it has its own delightful college functions. Often, 
however, there are undergraduate teas with music 
and dancing until seven, to which the girls of 
the college invite the men as individuals, and every 
year the Barnard Junior Ball is given in Columbia's 
gymnasium, — with twenty-four numbers on the 
programme, fine music, an elaborate supper, and 
a wealth of blue and white decorations. For the 
most, however, the social life of the two colleges 
is admirably individual. 

Just at the present time, as Fiske Hall has been 
outgrown, the girls who do not live with their par- 
ents in or about New York are made comfortable in 
the dormitory of the Teachers' College, just across 
the street. The board here costs from seven dollars 
to twelve dollars a week, which, added to text book, 
matriculation, and tuition fees, makes the total neces- 
sary expenses for a student at Barnard average about 
fifteen dollars each week of the academic year. 
Chapel service, held in the college assembly-room on 



138 The College Girl of America 

Tuesday and Friday of each week at half -past twelve, 
and conducted by Dean Gill, or by some clergyman 
of the city, is a beautiful academic function. It 
lasts twenty minutes and attendance is entirely vol- 
untary. Always, however, there are hundreds of 
worshippers present. 

Inasmuch as the large majority of the Barnard 
girls are day-students, the college must make pro- 
vision for studies and reading-rooms. One such 
study in Fiske Hall is charmingly furnished in 
green, and has been equipped by the alumnae as 
memorial to Miss Ella Weed, for many years the 
very able chairman of the college's academic com- 
mittee. In the basement of this same building is a 
well set up lunch room where excellently cooked and 
nicely served food is provided at a nominal cost. 

The little plays, the teas, the fudge parties, and 
the chafing-dish affairs, which make up the charm 
of college-girl life, are as prominent at Barnard as 
in other educational centres. Every class entertains 
the freshmen within a month or two of their entrance 
at college, and about Christmas time the incoming 
class returns the compliment. Once shadow pictures 
furnished the amusement on such an occasion, and 
at another time there was a cotillion. Of under- 
graduate plays, too, Barnard has its share. " The 
School for Scandal " is frequently presented, and. 



Barnard College 139 

last year, on a special occasion, " The Manoeuvres 
of Jane " was given an almost professional pres- 
entation in the theatre of the college building. 
Though tennis and basket-ball have been enjoyed to 
some extent, the college has hitherto had no gymna- 
sium work. Now a new building is being erected, 
by means of which the ** sound body " will be kept 
carefully in mind. 

The flavour of life at Barnard can perhaps be 
best conveyed by some excerpts from The Mortar- 
hoard, the college annual. Here an undergraduate 
thus describes herself : 

" I am the very model of a perfect undergraduate, 

I never overcut, at recitations I am never late ; 

I always know my lessons and delight to answer readily 

The deep and puzzling questions which the others fail at 

steadily. 
I am present at all meetings where a quorum is or's meant 

to be, 
And remember to address the chair in language parliamentary. 
I read through every reference book that's given out in my 

course, 
And write neat commentaries on whatever facts I come 

across ; 
The questions that I ask are all indicative of intellect, 
I never leave the subject, or indulge in lengthy retrospect. 
I write a hand that's legible, I show a lot of common sense, 
And on committees do the work successfully at small expense. 
I show my college spirit by subscribing for the Bulletin. 
The Morningside and Lit are also things I put my money in. 



140 The College Girl of America 

I always pay my dues and do it solely of my own accord, 
I laugh at all the jokes in that absurdity, the Mortarboard^ 
In view of which I'm sure you will not think it overbold to 

state 
That I 'm the very model of a perfect undergraduate." 

Further on in this same interesting class produc- 
tion, the Barnard girls thus cleverly feel their tem- 
peramental pulse : " However much our impression 
on undergraduate life may be worn smooth, it will be 
impossible to obliterate the marks of the college 
influence upon ourselves, even when formulae have 
become medley, and hypotheses have run aground 
upon fact. A four years' reaction of individual upon 
individual does not harden the college woman, as 
some antagonists to the * higher education ' are wont 
to assert. On the contrary, we have found that it 
tends to wear away prejudices and peculiarities, and 
to stimulate a healthy, sympathetic, human charity 
toward men and women. We have proved the 
proposition which our class genius considers an 
axiom : * The longer you know most people, the 
better you like them.' " 

That the Barnard girls are able to appreciate their 
individual as well as their sex peculiarities, is shown 
by some of the " grinds " in the class biography at 
the end of a Mortarboard. One of these reads : 



Barnard College 141 

" Alas, Gulielma ! we would fain 
Thy pleasant friendship claim ; 
But no, it is impossible — 
We cannot speak thy name ! " 

A peppery maiden is thus gently ridiculed : 

"We love little Helen, her heart is so warm, 
And if you don't cross her she'll do you no harm; 
So don't contradict her, or else, if you do, 
Get under the table and wait till she's through." 

Every college girl who has ever speculated as to 
the authorship of a particularly clever daily theme, 
and has then had her curiosity gratified by an omnis- 
cient maiden who sits down front, will appreciate 
this " grind " : 

"'Who wrote the theme?' 

* I know,' said Adele, 

* I know very well 
Who wrote the theme.* 

* How do you know ? ' 

* I sit near and spy 
With my little eye, 
That's how I know.' " 

But to the Barnard girl, as to her sisters in other 
colleges, comes finally an end to the years of study 
and friendly fooling. On the last Friday of the 
spring term, the Class Day exercises for the girls 



142 The College Girl of America 

are held in the theatre ; a salutatory is given by the 
president of the class, the roll called by the secre- 
tary, the class statistics presented, the class prophecy 
made, the class oration pronounced, the song '' To 
Barnard " sung, and the valedictory offered. The 
following Sunday, Barnard girls share with the 
other members of Columbia University the Bacca- 
laureate sermon in the university gymnasium, wear- 
ing their caps and gowns, and looking every inch 
the grave and reverend seniors that they are. On 
Wednesday the Commencement exercises for the 
whole university are held in Columbia gymnasium, 
and degrees are given to the graduates of all depart- 
ments of the university. This function comes in 
the morning, and the seniors march to it in stately 
procession. It is followed by a lunch at Barnard 
for the new graduates of that college, and the same 
afternoon the Association of Barnard College 
Alumnae gives a reception to the incoming class. 

When all this is over, the girls who were yes- 
terday undergraduates are full-fledged alumnae, with 
the duty and privilege of working for their col- 
lege. Often they do' this in highly original fashion. 
The class of 1903, for instance, gave this spring 
at Sherry's, for the benefit of the Barnard Reading- 
room, a very interesting entertainment called 
Advance Sheets. The Contents of the Sheets were 




u 

ai 
O 

a 

Q 

3 



p 

o 

U 

O 
H 

C 
Z 

X 
U 

< 

OS 

o 

CO 

Q 
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Barnard College 143 

introduced by Walter S. Page, editor of the World's 
Work, after which Agnes ReppHer, Richard Le 
Gallienne, Carolyn Wells, Myra Kelly, Seumas 
McManus, Elene Foster, and others, read from con- 
tributions of theirs about to be published in various 
well-known magazines. It is a pity that no Mortar- 
hoard comment on the afternoon is obtainable. I 
am so sure it would be crisp and interesting. 



THE WOMAN'S COLLEGE OF BALTIMORE 

In these days, when so many people are sorely 
puzzled in regard to the best method of educating 
girls, it is a relief to encounter a man who believes 
with all his strength in the form of education which 
he is himself directing. Such a man is Dr. John 
F. Goucher, president of the Woman's College at 
Baltimore. 

Doctor Goucher holds that the physical and psy- 
chical differences between young men and young 
women are so great, that their college courses must 
be not only separate, but diverse. Woman's special 
work, he believes, is still centred in the home and 
circles outward, while man's special work is in the 
world and circles inward. Man's success, he argues, 
comes through concentration, continuity of work, 
and cumulative results. His strength is in per- 
sistence. He must be a specialist, limiting his field 
if he would intensify his power. Woman, on the 
other hand, has to do work which is much more 
difficult, and reaches considerably further. The 

resulting demands upon her are varied, involved, 

144 



The Woman's College of Baltimore 145 

and numberless. Her success will depend, there- 
fore, upon her versatility. She needs alertness and 
poise, judgment and skill, taste and tact, a nature 
enriched with varied and exact knowledge, beauti- 
fied by culture, chaste and strong through discipline, 
lofty in ideals, and possessing the incomparable 
grace of unselfish ministry. Thus, and thus only, 
as wife and mother, embodiment and inspiration 
of the best in society, an ever-new revelation of 
the meaning, beauty, and power of the gospel of 
love and ministry, is she qualified to meet the varied 
demands of family life. 

To put the thing colloquially, Doctor Goucher 
would educate " girls as girls." The ordinary girls' 
college turns out, he will tell you, an occasional 
scholar, some pedants, many teachers, and a few — 
a very few — all around girls. It is toward the 
multiplication of the " all around girl " that the 
president of Baltimore is bending his energies. 
Every effort is made at this college to develop 
appreciation, ripe culture, and womanliness. To 
this end even the minutest appointments of the 
college buildings have been directed. 

Of campus, this institution has almost none. Yet 
the college has not been swallowed up in the city 
like its neighbour, Johns Hopkins, for green lawns 
separate the red-roofed halls from the street and 



146 The College Girl of America 

from each other, and on all sides there is such 
openness to light and air as is usually to be found 
only in the country. The site was chosen, the 
buildings planned, and the spot which each should 
occupy selected while this entire district of Balti- 
more was little more than an open field. One style 
of architecture — Tuscan Romanesque — and one 
material — rough gray granite — have been used 
for all the halls, so that the college group is one of 
singular simplicity, beauty, and congruity. Of the 
ten new buildings erected for college purposes, the 
picture here given shows only the four on the south- 
west quarter of the grounds. The church at the left- 
hand corner is used for chapel purposes, and for 
lectures and assemblies of various kinds. The next 
building is for administration and general instruc- 
tion, the next is the gymnasium, and that in the 
rear is the biological laboratory. 

For a college which is scarcely sixteen years old, 
Baltimore may certainly be held to have made great 
strides. When the institution was opened, there 
was doubt in many minds as to whether any real 
need of a woman's college of the highest grade 
existed in the Maryland city. For twenty-five years 
the project of founding here a young ladies' sem- 
inary of the common type had been mooted, and 
at last the hope of doing this seemed near realiza- 



The Woman's College of Baltimore 147 

tion. There were many among the friends of the 
proposed institution who felt that such a seminary 
would fully meet any existing requirements. It is 
now generally conceded, however, that the happiest 
accident that ever happened to Baltimore was that 
which made the new institution a college in the 
true sense of the word. Founded by the Baltimore 
conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the 
prime aim was, as a matter of course, to provide 
for the needs of the community which it repre- 
sented. Yet for a number of years now the college 
has drawn its students almost, if not quite, as largely 
from the North and West as from Maryland and 
other Southern States. Thus it will be seen that 
Baltimore may yet hope to compete successfully 
with colleges of the same character in the North. 

Although the college is the offspring of a de- 
nominational body, more than fifty per cent, of its 
students are from families not affiliated with the 
Methodist sect. This comes about, no doubt, from 
the fact that the college has, from the outset, pur- 
sued the liberal policy of placing the least possible 
emphasis upon its denominational relations, the aim' 
of the Church in founding the institution having 
been simply to secure to the young women of the 
community in which it exists certain intellectual 
advantages under conditions in no way subversive 



148 The College Girl of America 

of their moral and religious welfare. Very nat- 
urally, however, the foundation being as it is, mem- 
bers of the college are required to attend the service 
held every morning (except Saturday and Sunday), 
in the beautiful little elliptical chapel, which is an 
echo of San Vitale in Ravenna. On Saturday and 
Sunday the devotional meetings are held in the resi- 
dence-halls, and for these, too, each student is ex- 
pected to be on hand. Sunday mornings, girls go to 
service at the city church of the denomination with 
which they are affiliated when at home. 

President Goucher has very strong ideas as to 
what should be done for girls when at college. He 
would have a girl not only acquainted with a wide 
range of subjects during her undergraduate year, 
but he would have her know, besides, one or two 
things thoroughly. Superficiality is the last thing 
the Woman's College proposes to inculcate. Some- 
where, wherever she seems by nature to run 
deepest, the girl here enrolled must do rigid, in- 
tensive work. In one subject or two subjects, she 
is as thorough as the four years of college life 
permit. Then, too, her electives are not chosen at 
random. The curriculum is ranged in related groups 
of subjects; her electives, or " minors," have to be 
picked from the same group to which her major 
subject belongs. So, while the variety of the re- 



The Woman* s College of Baltimore 149 

quired work makes for liberality and wide intelli- 
gence, the check of the group system of electives 
prevents a girl's course from being too widely 
scattered. A student, for instance, who elects the 
German-French group, carries on the study of 
French daily for a period of two years beyond the 
point at which others drop it, besides taking the 
remaining studies prescribed for all alike. The re- 
sult is that the girl who has chosen this particular 
group feels at the end of her course that, besides the 
discipline received from studying those other things 
that go to make up a college curriculum, she has 
such knowledge of her particular subjects as must 
give her a confidence in herself and her powers not 
possible to one who has merely a smattering of 
many branches, without having gone very deeply 
into any of them. 

Culture in its broadest sense is what Doctor 
Goucher desires for his girls. He believes that 
every community should have a leisure class, not 
composed of persons who have nothing to do, but 
of those who will command time for educational, 
benevolent, and religious work, giving their services 
for the general good without direct financial re- 
turn. This class he would have the graduates of 
Baltimore swell. His object, therefore, is to produce 
girls with forceful and resourceful personalities. 



150 The College Girl of America 

A very strong point in Doctor Goucher's edu- 
cational creed is that a young woman has as much 
need to be trained in social ease and grace as in 
profounder things. Every effort is made at Balti- 
more to develop appreciation, womanliness, and 
poise. He will have no " digs." In his opinion the 
truest womanliness is not attained by the " grind." 

This educator believes that provision should also 
be made for regulated social functions. Dinner is 
a leisurely and a somewhat formal meal. Recep- 
tions are provided for at irregular intervals, and 
calls from young men permitted within proper 
limits. Nor will he have his residence-halls pre- 
sided over by teachers. " Instructors will have more 
and a better influence if they come to their lecture- 
rooms with the force of a fresh relation, and occa- 
sionally entertain their students, a few at a time, 
in their own homes." His faculty, too, must be 
about equally divided between men and women, 
chosen because of their strong, helpful personality, 
as well as because of their scholarship and their 
aptness for teaching. 

The underlying thought of all this is his desire 
that girls shall not become disarticulated from life 
during their college course. Hence the city site. 
" Women set off by themselves in a country soli- 
tude are prone to develop abnormally. They accus- 



The Woman's College of Baltimore 151 

torn themselves so completely to the artificial stand- 
ards of community life, that when they go home 
they must spend one, and perhaps several, painful 
years in becoming readjusted." So plant your col- 
lege in a city, President Goucher says, near enough 
to the suburbs to command clean air and easy access 
to the open field, and you can keep your girls 
healthy and yet in normal relation to the world 
of men and women. Again, for country-bred girls, 
who inevitably make up no small proportion of the 
clientele of any college, contact with the elevating 
life of the city is by no means to be despised. 

Incidentally, Baltimore gains greatly in other 
than social ways from its city site. It has, just 
around the corner, a station of the Pratt Library, 
and the vast resources of the Peabody and Johns 
Hopkins Library are also at hand to draw upon. 
From the university, too, come lecturers, and, for 
that matter, full professors. Always there are many 
Hopkins graduates on the college faculty. Wash- 
ington is within easy reach of the students, and at 
its Smithsonian Institute every possible facility is 
placed at the disposal of girls from the Woman's 
College. Moreover, many of the illustrious foreign- 
ers who visit the nation's capitol are easily per- 
suaded to run down to Baltimore for lectures at 
Johns Hopkins and at President Goucher's charge. 



152 The College Girl of America 

The average student leaves this institution, it is 
interesting to learn, in much better health than she 
entered it. From inclination or training, or because 
social standards restrain, young women are usually 
more sedentary than young men. Their pursuits, 
when not at study, tend rather to withdraw them 
from exercise than to invite them to it. Careful 
provision has therefore been made at Baltimore 
for systematic required exercises under the personal 
direction of skilful medical advisers and specialists 
in mechanico-therapeutics. " For a disciplined body 
is as essential to a thoroughly educated woman as a 
cultured mind or loyal spirit." The climax of Bal- 
timore's healthful system naturally comes in its 
gymnasium, which has all kinds of appliances helpful 
to girls; in connection with it is maintained ex- 
cellent basket-ball practice, as well as instruction 
in swimming. Health has again been carefully con- 
sidered in the planning of the three college homes. 
These are situated far enough away from the college 
to necessitate an early morning walk and to remove 
them from any possibility of an overlapping academic 
atmosphere, which the president considers extremely 
bad. In plan, the houses are like the best appointed 
apartment-hotels, but they are carefully presided 
over by women chosen for dignity and social effi- 
ciency. 



The Woman's College of Baltimore 153 

In the ideal college for women the number of 
students, according to Doctor Goucher, should 
never be more than about four hundred. The last 
report gives three hundred and seventy-five as Balti- 
more's registration. Of this number only one hun- 
dred and fifteen are from Maryland. So it is plain 
that this college stands in no immediate danger of 
the ** provinciality " which this educational leader 
particularly deplores as a " woman's college tend- 
ency." 

For day students the cost is $125 a year; for 
residents, $400 a year. 

To those of us who are inclined to think meanly 
of education south of Mason and Dixon's Line, a 
visit to the Baltimore Woman's College is in the 
nature of a revelation. For not only are its capped 
and gowned maidens decidedly academic in aspect, 
but its faculty is very largely made up of men and 
women who have won advanced degrees and at- 
tained distinctly high rank in scholarly directions. 
Its courses, too, are immensely ambitious in scope, 
and its museums and libraries are second to none in 
equipment. And, most important of all, it has in 
its president an able man, filled with what seem 
to many the best ideas ever evolved concerning the 
proper method of educating girls. 



THE RANDOLPH - MACON WOMAN'S 
COLLEGE 

The purest type of Southern college girl is prob- 
ably that produced by the Randolph-Macon Insti- 
tution at Lynchburg, Virginia. This school is a 
branch of the Randolph-Macon Methodist educa- 
tional system which stretches through Virginia, 
and is presided over by William Waugh 
Smith, A. M., LL. D., an educator of considerable 
ability. It is conscientiously and splendidly aca- 
demic, and its girls are enthusiastic, generous, and 
loyal, as well as eager to represent the old Virginia 
ideals, with such added breadth of culture as this 
generation affords. The moral, as well as the men- 
tal, atmosphere of the college is healthy and uplift- 
ing. Probably there is no institution in the South 
which cares less than does Randolph-Macon for 
what a girl has, or more for what a girl is. The 
brief but comprehensive rule of life here — the very 
corner-stone, indeed, of the institution's discipline — 
is " Studentlike and ladylike conduct is expected 
of all who remain with us." This adequately covers 

154 




A RANDOLPH - MACON GIRL. 



The Randolph-Macon Woman* s College 155 

the ground. For, while it does not imply absence of 
controlling influence, it states concisely and accu- 
rately the attitude of the officers toward the Ran- 
dolph-Macon ideal, any deviation from which could 
not be safely indulged in by a girl who desired 
to enjoy here the richness and fulness of college 
life. 

The new student coming to Lynchburg is provided 
in advance with a set of college colours, which 
enables her to be quickly identified by the repre- 
sentative of the school whom she finds waiting at 
the station, and by the kindly Christian Association 
girls there to help her feel at home. A fifteen 
minutes' ride on the electric-car line brings her to 
the college gate, from which the Randolph-Macon 
building seems very large as well as very beautiful, 
as it sits above an undulating expanse of blue grass 
against a mountain background. Inside, the building 
proves even larger than at first view. The grand 
corridor itself is, in point of fact, more than a hun- 
dred yards long, while up-stairs are very many spa- 
cious lecture-rooms, chemical, physical, biological, 
and psychological laboratories, music-rooms, a beau- 
tiful library, a chapel, a large literary-hall, a well- 
equipped gymnasium, and a skylighted art studio. 
Two-thirds of this immense building is devoted to 



156 The College Girl of America 

public uses, the remaining third being given over 
to dormitories. 

The entering student soon finds that the relation 
existing between the undergraduates and their in- 
structors is almost ideal. Men as well as women 
belong to the faculty, and the wives and families 
of professors feel a very real interest in the girls 
who have come to Randolph-Macon to grow into 
women. Acquirements at this college are not simply 
book-learned ; the development is many-sided, so 
that, after the student's course is completed, she 
must find herself intellectually, physically, socially, 
and spiritually better fitted to enter life and to meet 
its obligations. The teachers are specialists, en- 
thusiastic and progressive in their work, and they 
arouse the ambition of the student and make her 
put forth her best efforts. The associations are 
stimulating, and distractions are excluded. 

Let us follow a Randolph-Macon girl through 
an ordinary day, and see how her twenty-four hours 
are spent. The rising-gong sounds at seven, the 
dusky " utility man " who performs this duty evi- 
dently having that joy in his work for which Pres- 
ident Eliot of Harvard has lately been calling. At 
seven forty-five comes breakfast, a meal requiring 
not more than half an hour, even for the least 
expeditious, while most girls are quite ready to 




THE COLLEGE BUILDING. 




V 



THE GYMNASIUM. 



The Randolph-Macon Woman^s College 157 

leave at the expiration of the twenty minutes' table- 
time required of all. Then the morning mail is 
distributed — a part of the day's work which is 
always of absorbing interest. From eight forty-five 
till nine is devoted to enjoyable chapel exercises, 
which the professors conduct in weekly turn, and 
from nine until ten minutes after one come the reci- 
tation periods. Such students as have no classes 
are meanwhile at work in their rooms, or in the 
college library. 

Dinner is at noon, and the food, the cooking, and 
the service is of the kind dear to the Southern girl's 
heart. After dinner recitations are resumed for 
about two hours. E^ch student has three or four 
lecture periods a day, perhaps, but when these are 
over gymnasium attendance, walking, basket-ball, 
and tennis fill up the time until tea, which comes at 
half-past six. After tea, evening worship, and the 
distribution of the afternoon mail, there is a delight- 
ful half-hour which each girl spends as suits her 
best. The chat, the promenading, and the sunset 
confidences of this period are brought to an end 
by the study-bell, which rings at seven-thirty. Then 
the girls retire to their rooms, and quiet reigns 
until half-past ten, when the retiring-bell rings, and 
all must go to bed. 

So runs the daily week-day life. On Sunday 



158 The College Girl of America 

morning there is regular Bible study, and each of 
the resident professors teaches a class. Then, in such 
groups as they prefer, the girls go to church in the 
city, sitting in the congregation with other wor- 
shippers. Sunday afternoon, under the presidency 
of a popular woman instructor, the Ethical Society 
meets, and discusses informally such questions as 
''Meddlesomeness," ''College Duties," or "The 
Proper Keeping of the Sabbath." Sunday evening 
after tea there is an hour of religious exercises, 
conducted three times a month by some officer of 
the college, or by a visiting minister, and once a 
month by the missionary department of the Young 
Women's Christian Association, a body of large 
membership and broad usefulness at this college. 

Monday is the free day, which means the busiest 
'day of the week. The morning is usually devoted 
to odds and ends of work; but in the afternoon 
there is visiting, shopping, or whatever else seems 
to the individual girl the most attractive fashion 
of having a good time. 

Wednesday afternoon the workaday programme 
is varied by a weekly musical rehearsal, preceded 
by an instructive lecture which enables even non- 
musical students to understand somewhat, and appre- 
ciate a good deal, the choice programme then pre- 
sented. Saturday also ends with a celebration. For 



The Randolph-Macon Woman^s College 159 

now the work of the week is over, and there is 
opportunity for society meetings with their essays, 
debates, and so on. After tea on Saturday comes 
a Current Events Club, with papers and discussions 
on matters of current interest. Every other Satur- 
day is Social Evening, *' when gentlemen who are 
on the college visiting-list are free to call." 

Home Evening, which alternates on Saturday 
with Social Evening, is, however, the " best time 
of the week " to most of the students. '' Our Alma 
Mater," one Randolph-Macon girl declares, " is 
never so attractive as when she thus bids us put 
away our books and gather in the parlour for a 
jolly good time." Sometimes the good time is 
social and humourous; sometimes it is musical; 
sometimes literary. A Dickens Evening, with 
everybody representing a well-known character, has 
on several occasions given great pleasure. Tableaux 
vivants from ^' Mother Goose " are always amusing; 
for when a dignified professor becomes Simple 
Simon, the girls in his courses naturally get con- 
siderable fun out of the situation. 

Thanksgiving and Christmas are, of course, times 
of special interest, for then there are extraordinary 
offerings in the dining-room, as well as jest and 
jollity in the parlour. Field Day, devoted to athletic 
competition, when the experts in basket-ball, tennis, 



i6o The College Girl of America 

running, and other sports of skill and grace win 
never-to-be-forgotten laurels, is open to visitors, as 
well as to the students, and is very much enjoyed. 

Of out-of-door excursions this college has its own 
distinctive variety. The Natural Bridge, one of the 
great wonders of this big country, is easily accessible 
from Randolph-Macon, as are also the Peaks of 
Otter, a favourite resort for May outings. To take 
a Friday evening train, get to the foot of the Peaks 
about six o'clock, and hasten up the steep hill to 
see the sunset from the top; to pack into the one 
big dormitory of the house on the summit, and, after 
such sleep as a big crowd of girls can get under 
these novel and exciting conditions, to rise by day- 
light and enjoy the glorious sight of mountains, 
plains, and river beneath waking to life, is to 
be uplifted and awed — to have, in a word, such an 
experience as one can never forget. 

A great deal is made at Randolph-Macon — and 
with cause, too, it seems to me — of the fact that 
it is the only woman's college in its section with a 
standard high enough to entitle it to recognition 
along with the old and famous women's colleges of 
the North. But if its standards are high, its prices 
are low. The entire yearly expense, including tui- 
tion, is only two hundred and fifty dollars. That the 



The Randolph-Macon Woman's College i6i 

peculiar advantages it affords are being appreciated 
may be understood from the fact that, though it is 
only ten years old, the last report gives the total num- 
ber of its students as two hundred and sixty-three. 
Best sign of all, there is absolutely no preparatory 
department here. The system is largely elective, 
however, and it is quite possible for students who 
do not care to go in for the A. B. or the A. M. 
degree to secure proficiency in some special subject. 
But it is w^orth noting that by far the greater number 
of the girls do qualify for degrees and take them 
with honours. 

Randolph-Macon may well be proud of the work 
which it is doing for Southern girls. Even the 
casual visitor feels strongly the need and the value 
of this college. And of course no young woman 
who has spent four years in the institution can 
possibly fail to appreciate the college's great mission 
in the Southland; it is with deep feeling that she 
sings at Commencement this alumnae song: 

GOD BLESS YOU, RANDOLPH -MACON 

«« Oh ! we came from North and South, from East and West, 

To Randolph-Macon, then to us a name, 
And every college passed was called the best, 

And all, indeed, to us were much the same ; 
But once we entered Randolph-Macon's halls, 

And passed within the shelter of her door, 



i62 The College Girl of America 

We found both love and knowledge in the dear old mother 
college, 
And it's Alma Mater now for evermore. 

CHORUS 

" Oh ! dear old Alma Mater, how majestic now you stand, 
You're a credit to Virginia and a blessing to the land ; 
May your glory never lessen, may your children e'er be true, 
God bless you, Randolph-Macon ! here's a student's love for 
you." 




A BROWN GIRL. 



THE WOMAN'S COLLEGE IN BROWN 
UNIVERSITY 

To the casual visitor who encounters book-bur- 
dened girls on the Brown campus, or who, perhaps, 
looking into a Brown classroom, sees young women 
there beside young men, conditions at this university 
appear at first blush very like pure coeducation. Yet 
this college is of the type described as coordinate, 
rather than coeducational, inasmuch as the life of 
its students, its undergraduate courses, its class-day 
exercises, and all its social activities are separate — 
and this in spite of the fact that the library and the 
laboratories are always freely opened to girls, and 
on the day when Brown's degrees are conferred in 
the beautiful old Baptist meeting-house (which dates 
back to 1775, and declares itself "built for the 
worship of Almighty God, and to hold Commence- 
ments in"), girls in caps and gowns are on hand, 
just as men are. 

Lectures for the body of the women students, how- 
ever, are given altogether in Pembroke Hall, a 

substantial modern building after the old English 

163 



i64 The College Girl of America 

university style of the fifteenth century, erected by 
the Rhode Island Society for the Collegiate Educa- 
tion of Women, and by them presented to Brown 
University. Organized in 1895 and incorporated in 
1896, this society for the purpose of aiding and 
promoting the higher education of women in Brown 
had from the beginning the cordial cooperation of 
President Andrews, then the head of that college, 
who, as early as 1891, admitted women to Brown 
courses, and worked with such devotion for the 
girls of Rhode Island as to make it very fitting 
that the Alumnge Association of the women's col- 
lege now bears his name. The name Pembroke 
Hall came from that of Roger Williams College in 
England, pictures of which are appropriately prom- 
inent to-day in the office of the capable and very 
charming dean who acts as the head of the girls' 
part of Brown. The other executive officers of the 
woman's college are those members of the univer- 
sity faculty who are most intimately connected with 
the work at Pembroke Hall. But what is, perhaps, 
of greatest importance tO' the woman's department 
of the university, is the warm interest and support 
which the best people in Rhode Island have given to 
this laudable endeavour to provide for the girls of 
their State the highest educational facilities. Nor has 
the attitude of Brown itself been any less generous 



Woman's College in Brown University 165 

and fine. At first, to be sure, the women were 
merely tolerated; but now they are cordially wel- 
comed. They have won their place. 

Thus far one dormitory has proved quite suffi- 
cient for the needs of Pembroke girls, as a very large 
number of them are able to live at home while 
attending college. Their residence-hall is Slater 
Memorial Homestead, a singularly beautiful build- 
ing, with not a little of the old-time charm to be 
noted in many of the best Rhode Island mansions. 
Furnished by Mrs. Horatio Slater's daughter, Mrs. 
Washburn, it is very liberally supplied with such 
pictures, books, and tasteful rugs as conduce to that 
refined atmosphere so important for college girls. 
Nor is this an expensive place of residence; the 
charge for rooms and board averages only six dol- 
lars and a half a week. Tuition at Brown, it should 
be said, is one hundred and five dollars a year. 

With the exception of a Classical Club, founded 
in honour of Albert Harkness, professor emeritus, 
which meets five or six times a year on Saturday 
afternoons in the homes of faculty members, and 
to which both the men and women students of 
Brown belong, all the clubs open to girls are indi- 
vidual organizations. Of these, besides the Greek 
Letter fraternities, there are the Komians, a dramatic 
body, which, in the spring of 1903, gave " Pyg- 



i66 The College Girl of America 

malion and Galatea " with great success, and has 
usually some worthy drama or other in rehearsal; 
the Glee Club, which gives one big concert a year 
in the college and a few recitals in near-by towns; 
and the Athletic Association, which embraces the 
sporting interests of the college. 

A very efficient body at Pembroke is the Young 
Women's Christian Association. This conducts each 
fall a large reception, in the course of which the 
freshmen are welcomed to college. All girls are at 
once urged to belong to the Association, and half the 
students in the college accept this invitation, the 
result being that the Christian Association is a very 
important factor in the college life. Each May it 
gives a festival with a theatrical and bazaar attach- 
ment, for the purpose of raising funds to send dele- 
gates to the Silver Bay Conference. 

The most important organization among the 
Brown women is that which is devoted to student 
government. This has worked remarkably well, 
though it is of quite recent origin. Under its super- 
vision, attendance at recitation and at chapel, as 
well as talking in the halls, and various other phases 
of college life, are regulated. Chapel is held every 
day except Saturday at a quarter before nine, in the 
one large room at the top of Pembroke Hall avail- 
able for assembly purposes. The dean, in academic 



Woman's College in Brown University 167 

robes, conducts the service, reading not only from 
the Bible, but also from one or another of the 
beautiful poets whose works are justly famous. 
This last rather original form of worship is espe- 
cially enjoyed by the students. 

Of course the girls at Pembroke Hall have their 
good times, as do all other college girls. At a 
recent Hallowe'en party, there was a jolly informal 
dance in a hall decorated with Jack-o'-lanterns cut 
out of real pumpkins. The programmes of paper 
Jack-o'-lanterns opened to show the dance-order. If 
one may judge, too, from the life as reflected in that 
admirable college magazine, the Sepiad (a kind of 
play on the word Brown), published four times a 
year, there is quite enough variety and colour in 
the undergraduate days at Pembroke. None the less, 
the general tenor of life here may, properly enough, 
be called academic. The girls have the appearance 
of young women to whom student opportunities 
mean very much. They like to remember that the 
president of Wellesley had the advantage of Brown 
courses, and they are justly proud of the fact that 
the first woman to take a Brown degree is now 
president of Mt. Holyoke College. 

Inasmuch as the college is so largely used by day 
students, it is decidedly important to know what 
provision has been made for the comfort of the girls 



i68 The College Girl of America 

who go home at night. Pembroke Hall may certainly 
be dubbed superlatively kind in this direction. Its 
beautiful library, with classic frieze, and its spa- 
cious reading-room (supplied by the Andrews 
Association with all the magazines and with one 
or two good daily papers), are good for the eye as 
well as for the mind; they also have chairs that 
rest the back. 

Though the women of Brown University receive, 
with the men, a Brown degree on Brown's Com- 
mencement Day, they have their own class exercises 
out-of-doors the Tuesday preceding Commence- 
ment. For this a canopy is erected over the " one 
tenth of a mile " campus at the back of Pembroke 
Hall, and here, comfortably shaded from the sun, 
the friends of the students are in waiting when the 
graduating girls in caps and gowns march out in 
the aisle of laurel for their interesting ivy exer- 
cises. The programme opens with a welcome by 
the president of the senior class. This is followed 
by a speech from Dean Emery, after which one of 
the seniors addresses an inspiring talk to the under- 
graduates. President Faunce, too, has a share in 
the day's entertainment. But the real interest comes 
when the seniors leave the campus and plant their 
ivy at the side of Pembroke Hall. The trowel, after 
being used, is presented to a junior, who receives it 



Woman's College in Brown University 169 

with appreciative remarks. And then, to the music 
of the '' Old Oaken Bucket," comes this song, dear 
to all Sons and Daughters of Brown: 

" Alma Mater, we hail thee with loyal devotion 
And bring to thine altars our off'ring of praise. 
Our hearts swell within us with joyful emotion 
As the name of Old Brown in loud chorus we raise. 
The happiest moments of youth's fleeting hours 
We've passed 'neath the shade of these time-honoured walls ; 
And sorrows as transient as April's brief showers 
Have clouded our life in Brunonia's halls. 

" And when life's golden autumn with winter is blending, 
And brows now so radiant are furrowed with care ; 
When the blightings of age on our heads are descending, 
With no early friends all our sorrows to share, 
Oh, then, as in memory backward we wander, 
And roam the long vista of past years adown, 
On the scenes of our student life often we'll ponder 
And smile as we murmur the name of Old Brown." 



ELMIRA COLLEGE 

Elmira College has a unique claim to the atten- 
tion of college girls, inasmuch as it seems to have 
been the first institution in this country to confer 
the Bachelor's degree upon women. The story of 
the founding of this institution, often called " The 
Mother of Colleges," is of singular interest. 

The initiative mental conception that finally 

materialized in Elmira College is credited to a 

woman of keen intellect and noble soul, who lived in 

England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. She 

afterward became one of the pilgrims to Holland, 

later emigrating in the MayHozver to New England. 

It is claimed that she had fast in her mind the idea 

which eventually grew to the dignity of a purpose 

— that provision should be made for the education 

of women on an equal basis with men. In May, 

1783, her great-great-granddaughter, Phebe Allen 

Hinsdale, who inherited the idea, was born, and, as 

she grew in years, her desire to start a woman's 

college increased proportionately. Her name should 

stand among the first, therefore, on the honour-page 

170 




AN ELMIRA GIRL. 



Elmira College 171 

of the history of colleges for women. What Mary 
Lyon was to a later period, Phebe Allen Hinsdale 
was to an earlier — as Mary Lyon's highest ideal 
was a seminary for girls, Phebe Allen Hinsdale's 
was a college for women. 

It was through her son, Samuel Robbins Brown, 
that the purpose so long unfulfilled was to be real- 
ized. This son, born June 16, 18 10, became, in 
time, a graduate from Yale and from Union Sem- 
inary, New York. In childhood, in youth, in young 
manhood, his mother had faithfully inspired in him, 
along with other exalted ideals, that having to do 
with a college for women. Thus, when he became 
pastor of the Reformed Dutch Church at Owasco, 
near Auburn, New York, he determined to put into 
action his long-slumbering desire for a woman's col- 
lege. A meeting was called, accordingly, in 1851, 
in the consistory rooms of the Second Reformed 
Dutch Church of Albany, and to those present 
Doctor Brown explained his desire and outlined his 
plan to establish, exclusively for women, a college 
which should be of the same grade as colleges for 
men. 

The task was undertaken with a will. Auburn 
being selected as the place of location and Doctor 
Brown elected chairman of the committee on organ- 
ization. But, just at the time that this movement 



172 The College Girl of America 

was being so vigorously pushed forward in one 
New York town, there lived in the village of 
Elmira, not far away, a man of strong mind and 
warm heart, Simeon Benjamin by name, who, hear- 
ing of the project, was fired with an ambition to 
have the new college established in his own comi- 
munity. This man (an elder in the First Presby- 
terian Church) wrote of his wish to Doctor Brown, 
who was by this time tremendously perplexed as to 
the funds for his splendid undertaking, that if the col- 
lege were located in Elmira, he, Simeon Benjamin, 
would give eighty thousand dollars toward it. Be- 
lieving that a liberal initial equipment was a neces- 
sity, the college authorities accepted Mr. Benjamin's 
offer, and at once put up the necessary first building 
on the fine site where it still stands. The college 
was opened for students in September, 1855, 
and the following year the Rev. Augustus W. 
Cowles, D. D., a graduate of Union College in the 
class of 184 1, and of the Union Theological Sem- 
inary in 1856, became president of the institution, 
a position which he held technically until 1889, and 
practically until 1897. 

The long encumbency of Doctor Cowles may 
justly be termed the initiative period of college 
education for women. In his earlier years he had 
many obstacles to encounter. Prejudices there were 




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Elmira College 173 

on every side that demanded wisdom and courage 
of the highest order to overcome. Among univer- 
sity and college men, and also among parents, there 
was strong and freely expressed opposition to send- 
ing young women to college. That President 
Cowles met and dissipated such opposition is seen, 
however, in the fact that the institution over which 
he presided was, soon after his advent, full of stu- 
dents eager for college training, and that within 
ten years of the founding of Elmira College Mr. 
Vassar of Poughkeepsie wrote to him asking for 
instructions how to proceed to the establishment 
of a second college for women. These instructions 
v/ere given, and in due time there was established 
and opened in the city of Poughkeepsie the dis- 
tinguished college which Matthew Vassar endowed. 
Quite naturally the question may be asked at this 
point, " Why, if Elmira is so old and has so hon- 
ourable a record, do we not know more of it? Why 
has it only some two hundred students to-day, while 
Vassar and many another institution of much later 
date boasts of a distinctly larger student body?" 
Possibly the answer to these questions may be found 
in this little paragraph from one of the college 
booklets : " It may not be known to this generation 
that in 1863 — 64 Elmira College received a shock 
which did decided violence to its prospects at that 



174 The (Sollege Girl of America 

time, and reduced its student body from a number 
that overtaxed the capacity of the building to a 
very few. A scourge of smallpox overtook the town 
to such a degree that the deaths averaged at least 
twenty-five daily. The effect of this was that 
parents all over the country withdrew their daugh- 
ters from the college and sent them to other insti- 
tutions. Indeed, it was about this very time that 
Vassar College was opened, and large numbers of 
students who had come to Elmira went there, so 
that the tide was turned in another direction by 
circumstances over which no human power had any 
control. . . ." In 1896 another species of distress 
came to the historic institution, and threatened its 
extinction. The trouble this time was financial, but 
as a result of it there arose a vigorous movement 
to secure subscriptions for one hundred thousand 
dollars, which sum has now been obtained. 

The years which have witnessed this last-men- 
tioned growth in power and endowment have been 
years during which the Rev. Alexander Cameron 
MacKenzie, D. D., has been serving Elmira as pres- 
ident. When Doctor MacKenzie assumed the of^ce, 
he determined on several special lines of effort. 
Fi^st, to advance the entrance requirements, which 
are now in substantial accord with those of all the 
best colleges in the East; secondly, to enrich the 



Elmira College 175 

course leading to a degree, which has been done 
to such an extent as to gain the commendation of 
the Regents of the State of New York, and the 
respect of the college world in general; thirdly, to 
attract students in increased numbers, which has 
resulted in doubling the entering classes during the 
past four years ; fourthly, to fill each vacancy oc- 
curring in the faculty with professors of experience 
and advanced scholarship, who have not only taken 
the A. B. degree, but who have besides a doctor's 
degree acquired from some of the great universities. 
Doctor MacKenzie is further working, now, for a 
semicentennial fund of half a million dollars, and it 
is hoped that his efforts will be crowned with entire 
success when the college celebrates its fiftieth anni- 
versary in 1905. 

That Elmira College has all along the way been 
limited in its means cannot be regarded as altogether 
unfortunate, however. For this very thing has 
caused the institution to offer, as its most important 
attraction, exceeding excellence of instruction and 
the best possible training for the personal character 
of the student. In its situation, too, the college 
has many advantages; its elevation commands a 
view of the surrounding country for many miles, 
and on its campus are ample accommodations for 



176 The College Girl of America 

the tennis-courts and the basket-ball fields so neces- 
sary to the outdoor life of girl students. 

As would be expected, Elmira has stood all 
through its history for the belief that no intellectual 
culture can ever compensate for the atrophy of 
the religious nature. It conceives that the charge 
of the past to the present is to see to it that this 
college shall become to an ever-widening degree the 
nursery of strong, free, and gentle spirits able to 
shape the future, and to face life with courage and 
joy. Students are expected to attend the chapel 
service held each morning at nine o'clock, as well as 
to be regular at some church on Sunday. The 
college course offers systematic instruction in biblical 
literature and Christian sociology. The charges at 
this college, it may be said in passing, are very 
reasonable, it being quite possible for a girl to live 
here at an expense of only a little over three hundred 
dollars a year, including tuition. There are numer- 
ous scholarship helps, also, for the worthy. 

Elmira College is not so serious, however, nof 
so inordinately devoted to thoughts of possible en- 
dowment and certain deserts, that its students neglect 
to have a good time. If one may judge from the 
appearance of the girls themselves, and from their 
life as reflected in that clever little college magazine, 
the Sibylj or that very impressive annual, the Iris, 



Elmira College 1*77 

there is no more delightful social life anywhere. 
Not because it is poetry (for it isn't), but because 
it reflects characteristic reverence for that first col- 
lege class, I reprint from the current Iris some 
rhymes addressed to the Girls of Fifty-five: 

" Your picture hangs on the chapel wall, 
Ringlets, brooches, hoopskirts and all 
The finery you donned, to be 
The first girls to gain a man's degree. 

" What fun did you have so long ago ? 
Were you allowed to skate and row ? 
Play tennis, golf, and basket-ball. 
Did you have proms or dances at all ? 

" Often we tell the story with pride, 
How fifty years ago you tried, 
In spite of scoffs and jeers, to be 
Sharers with men of that prized A. B. 

" Half a century parts us from you, 
Yet your victory helps us, too ; 
So here's to the girl of fifty-five, 
Who first showed us how to work and strive." 

That Elmira girls have not forgotten how to 
" work and strive " is shown by a recent editorial 
in the Sibyl. At the beginning of the college year, 
this explains, one of the problems which confronted 
the Editorial Board was that which has caused 
much thought in other colleges, i. e., the best way 



178 The College Girl of America 

to obtain material from the students, and of ascer- 
taining who can write. To do this a seemingly 
simple plan was adopted, but one which was so suc- 
cessful that it might be of interest and perhaps of 
use to other Boards who have felt the same need. 
At the issue of the first Sibyl, the announcement 
was made that a prize would be given to the class 
which submitted the greatest number of acceptable 
articles in a given time. No restrictions were placed 
on the nature of the material, whether essay, story, 
or poetry, this being left to the student. The prize 
was this : That the Sibyl Board would entertain 
the successful class. Among the students this an- 
nouncement caused a ripple of excitement, " which 
ripple spread until it became a great wave." At 
first the senior class held the front place, then the 
freshmen came up and passed the seniors. Where- 
upon the sophomores renewed their efforts, and for 
a time seemed certain of success. But the freshmen 
could not let the victory slip thus away, and one 
night " while their companions slept," several of the 
literary among them gathered in secret, and, having 
obtained permission to keep the light on, wrote far 
into the night for the Sibyl and the honour of the 
class. Of course these gallant freshmen won. 

The round of festivals at Elmira is a thoroughly 
delightful one. Early in November comes the 



Elmira College 179 

formal opening of the prettily furnished senior 
parlours, which, during the academic year now just 
closing, were made especially attractive by reason 
of some valuable and very beautiful china and linen, 
sent to Elmira by Mrs. Lowder of Japan. A tea 
is given this " first night " for the " sister classes," 
followed in the evening by a reading. Last year 
Stephen Phillips's " Herod " furnished the enter- 
tainment. Then comes Thanksgiving Day, with 
the tables arranged in the form of a cross, decorated 
with evergreens, and having for a centrepiece a 
large pile of pumpkins, beets, squashes, and ears 
of corn. After the typical Thanksgiving dinner is 
eaten, all adjourn to the college parlours, where 
coffee is served. 

The Junior Prom is one of the most delightful 
of Elmira affairs. The decorations last year on this 
occasion were all Japanese, red, the class colour, 
being most prominent. The pillars were wound in 
red, and over the organ was hung a large red ban- 
ner, upon which were the class numerals " 1905." 
Japanese lanterns were over all the lights, and in 
the centre of the ceiling was a huge Japanese um- 
brella. Another delightful function of last year 
for the juniors was that of Friday, March i8th. 
On this occasion, too, red was everywhere, great 
bunches of American beauty roses making the air 



i8o The College Girl of America 

sweet with their fragrance. The tables for this 
banquet formed a hollow square, whose centre was 
filled with palms. At every place lay a red rose, 
the name cards themselves being hand-painted red 
roses. The favours were red leather card-cases, 
with silver initials, in which were the toast and 
menu cards. During the evening an orchestra 
played constantly, making the time pass so quickly 
that when the punch was brought in for the toast- 
mistress, it seemed as if the feast had just begun 
instead of being nearly over. Each toast had a 
flower for its title, and in this way a very charm- 
ing wreath was woven. Many of the speeches were, 
of course, facetious, but in one of them, made by a 
member of the faculty, the key-note of the evening 
was struck with marked nobility. What she said 
is so much to the point that it is here repeated: 
'* This college, though small and unpretentious, has 
had the reputation of sending its graduates out 
equipped with a modest, but thorough, education. 
And I use this word education not in its restricted 
sense of erudition, but in its root-meaning, pre- 
served still in French, good upbringing — good 
breeding. George Eliot, in speaking of one of her 
characters, says : * She had the essential attributes 
of a lady — high veracity, delicate honour in her 
dealings, deference to others, and refined personal 



Elmira College i8i 

habits.' These are the quahties possessed by the 
flower of ladyhood — the flower which is indigenous 
to Elmira College." 

The culture that comes from dramatic perform- 
ances is by no means neglected at Elmira. The Fra- 
ternity of Thespis, an association for the study and 
presentation of classic dramatic literature, wel- 
comes to its numbers all girls who, besides possess- 
ing dramatic ability, have high standing in their 
class. At the Commencement season of 1903, these 
maidens gave their first out-of-door play, presenting 
*' As You Like It " on the Elmira campus. A band 
stationed on the slope just above the lake rendered 
music between the acts, and, what with the lights, 
the quaint Shakespearian costumes, and the moon 
shining through the trees, the scene was one long 
to be remembered. The acting was especially well 
done, the characters being interpreted with no little 
understanding. The groups of old trees, too, made 
a very realistic forest of Arden, for the accommo- 
dation of the banished duke and his lords and for the 
posting of Orlando's love-letters. 

In the fun of a May-day fete, Elmira likewise 
shares. This year the campus was thronged for the 
lovely festival with students and interested specta- 
tors. Just south of the lake stood the May-pole, 
with its yellow streamers. A little distance off. 



1 82 The College Girl of America 

draped in white, was the beauteous throne of the 
May Queen. At the appointed time, last year's 
Queen of the May, preceded by five heralds, took her 
place on the throne. Shortly afterward, the fresh- 
man class came marching down the campus hill, 
escorting the new May Queen, and singing the 
college song. When the new queen reached the 
throne, she was crowned by retiring royalty with 
a chaplet of daisies. Then the class went through 
two dances, the May-pole dance, and another flower 
dance, in which the girls were dressed to represent 
the four class flowers, the chrysanthemum, the red 
rose, the daisy, and the yellow rose. A very pretty 
picture all this made, as the bright colours in the 
costumes stood out in striking contrast against the 
green background of the campus. At six o'clock 
supper was served on the lawn to the students and 
their friends, after which the day's festivities closed 
with a dance. 



WELLS COLLEGE 

" Standing there alone, I thought I would rather 
be Girard as he was thus represented than the 
President of the United States, or the ruler of any 
of the great nations of the world. It was then and 
there that I resolved that if ever I had the ability 
I would go and do likewise. Through all the long 
years since that resolution was made, it has never 
been absent from my mind. Forty years, with the 
experience they have ripened, have served to 
strengthen rather than weaken my firm resolve. 
What you see here in this beginning, this nucleus 
of the great work which I have upon my mind, is a 
commencement only. If my life is spared, I hope to 
see it grow and become one of the first institutions 
in the land." 

In these words Henry Wells, at the age of seventy, 
revealed to the students of the institution which 
bears his name the high ambition which came to 
him while still a young man, not yet fully launched 
upon his business career, as he gazed for the first 
time upon the buildings of Girard College, Phila- 

183 



184 The College Girl of America 

delphia, then in process of construction. The form 
into which this ambition had finally crystallized, 
when, after many years of patient toil and waiting, 
he consecrated so much of his wealth to the cause of 
the higher education of women, he makes known 
in the address which he delivered on the first an- 
niversary of the laying of the corner-stone : 

" It is the fervent wish of the founder that this 
college may always be conducted on truly Chris- 
tian principles, and that its pupils may always be sur- 
rounded by an atmosphere of Christian influences. 
Highly appreciating the value of secular education, 
but not forgetful of its dangers, when divorced from 
religious training, it is his heartfelt desire that in 
this institution the two shall ever be so thoroughly 
combined that, through their mutual and coopera- 
tive influence, the young ladies who shall here spend 
their school life shall become not only intelligent and 
cultivated, but truly Christian, women. The ideal 
present to his mind is of a home, in which, sur- 
rounded by appliances and advantages beyond the 
reach of separate families, however wealthy, young 
ladies may assemble to receive that education which 
shall qualify them to fulfil their duties as women, 
daughters, wives, or mothers. Further, I desire to 
furnish the highest grade of education to women, by 
means of advantages equal in every particular to 



Wells College 185 

those which are now afforded to young men in the 
most advanced colleges of the land." When we take 
into consideration that Wells, though founded so 
long ago, is, and has been from the start, one of the 
few institutions exclusively for women to take first 
rank educationally, we may well grant Henry Wells, 
self-made man though he was, to be distinctly a 
pioneer in educational matters. 

The story of this man's life is the old familiar one 
of fidelity to business trust, of capacity and willing- 
ness to work, of personal ability and worth. Bom 
at Thetford, Vermont, December 12, 1805, ^^ 
moved, in 18 14, tO' western New York with his 
father, a pioneer missionary in that sparsely set- 
tled region. The head of the house possessed a 
large family, and, having but a small income, was 
able to provide for his sons only till they had reached 
the age when they could care for themselves. So 
when young Henry was sixteen he was apprenticed 
to the tanning and shoemaking trade. But for 
some reason he did not complete the stipulated term 
of service, and it was in the direction of the express 
enterprises with which his name was afterward to 
be coupled that the young man soon turned his at- 
tention. Wealth and the highest kind of success 
came to him through the great business which he 
built up, but he early saw the dangers which con- 



i86 The College Girl of America 

stantly threaten a purely material civilization, and 
the clear conviction that the family is the real source 
of strength and power in the social structure took 
possession of his soul. When at last he was able to 
put into execution his lifelong ambition, he turned 
very naturally, therefore, to the work of founding 
a woman's college. 

Ground was broken for the first building in April, 
1866, and the corner-stone was laid July 19th of 
the same year. The college was originally incor- 
porated under the title " Wells Seminary for the 
Higher Education of Young Women," but it was 
given at the very first full authority to " grant and 
confer such Honours, Degrees, and Diplomas as are 
granted by any University, College, or Seminary 
of Learning in the United States." The word col- 
lege was substituted for seminary in 1870, in re- 
sponse to the petition of the trustees to the regents 
of the University of the State of New York, as 
more in accord with the powers conveyed by the 
charter, and better expressing the plans and pur- 
pose of the founder. Thus Wells has every claim 
to be considered the second oldest college exclu- 
sively for women in the United States. (Vassar 
was founded in 1865, and, though Mt. Holyoke was 
established as a seminary in 1837, it did not assume 
collegiate character till 1888.) 



Wells College 187 

Because of its location in Aurora, New York, a 
beautiful and healthful village on the east shore 
of Cayuga Lake, the college has always had the 
advantage of delightful surroundings and favour- 
able health conditions. All the students spend a 
good deal of time on the water, for there are large 
club boats, as well as smaller skiffs. Quiet woods 
offer the temptation to wander for pure enjoyment 
through the ravines with their waterfalls, flowers, 
and ferns. Each student is expected to spend at 
least one hour daily in the open air, and there has 
ever been the greatest possible encouragement of 
outdoor sports. Tennis-courts, a basket-ball field, 
the golf-links, and fine roads for driving are ready 
for enjoyment. Inasmuch as the lake serves to 
temper the severity of the winter season — thus 
prolonging opportunity for outdoor recreation — 
and to render the spring days cool and bracing, 
Aurora enjoys remarkable exemption from all in- 
fluences injurious to health. 

The college aims to give a thorough academic 
training to all its students, at the same time main- 
taining and preserving, as its founder desired, the 
essential characteristics and ideals of a refined home. 
Chapel services are held each morning during term- 
time, and regular attendance here, as well as in one 



i88 The College Girl of America 

of the churches of the village on Sunday, is ex- 
pected. 

The system of self-government is in force at the 
college. This is based upon a series of simple rules, 
made by the students themselves — regulations 
which, for the greatest good of all, are observed 
by all resident members of the Collegiate Associa- 
tion. 

The founder had originally planned for a small 
college — for seventy-five students, indeed, and the 
number of students is still small, about one 
hundred and thirty only, which makes Wells 
the second smallest (Rockford has eighty-one) 
as well as the second oldest woman's college 
of the first rank. But the real strength and 
real life of any college lie not so much in the 
number of its students as in their character and 
devotion. Mrs. Grover Cleveland well represents the 
former. As for the latter — when on August 9, 
1888, the main building was burned, — a calamity 
almost irreparable, as it seemed, — Wells appeared 
to better advantage than at any time in its history. 
Scarcely any of the old students failed to return 
at the opening of the term in September. Then, 
for two years, the zeal of teachers, students, and 
friends carried the college triumphantly through the 
most critical period of its existence, to place it at the 



Wells College 189 

end of this time of stress on firmer, more gen- 
erous foundations than it had ever had before. The 
village hotel was chartered by the trustees and re- 
christened the " Wayside Inn " by the students. 
The homestead of Colonel Morgan, one of the col- 
lege's firmest friends, was brought into service as the 
*' Tabard Inn," the palatial residence of Mrs. Henry 
Morgan was occupied for the time as the " Annex," 
and Morgan Hall was made to answer most of the 
needs of instruction. From the blow of this fire 
Wells has risen upward by leaps and bounds in all 
phases of its life except that of student body ex- 
pansion. 

There are always compensations, however, in a 
small college for women. And of these Wells has 
her very good share. The social life is delightful 
in its refinement and simplicity. Each season brings 
its own amusements. At Hallowe'en there is a 
straw-ride and games; on Washington's Birthday 
an old-time reception. At the close of the semi- 
annual examinations in January there is the re- 
laxation-party, when " the mighty minds unbend 
after the labour and strain of examinations, and 
a great effort is made to be foolish rather than 
wise, to give up the evening entirely to fun, the 
more nonsensical the better." As a natural conse- 
quence of its situation, most amusements are some- 



igo The College Girl of America 

thing which can be done out in the woods, or on 
the lake. " There is Casa Fehce," a former student^ 
writes enthusiastically, " a lovely nook in the woods, 
with a rustic fireplace, which is a favourite spot 
for teas, and where Ruskin readings seem par- 
ticularly appropriate. There is Rocky Point, where 
larger parties assemble for impromptu picnics, com- 
ing by boat or wagon, or on foot, each mode of 
transportation appearing to its devotees so much 
more delightful than any other, that all are unself- 
ishly anxious not to deprive others of the places that 
seem especially desirable, until on one occasion 
scarcely an individual got the place she wished. In 
comparing notes afterward it was found that those 
who wished to walk were obliged to ride or row, 
those who were afraid of the water had to come 
in the boats, and those who were tired and wanted 
to ride were compelled, by the kindness and polite- 
ness of others, to walk. That was so absurd that 
we could only laugh, but we do not often have such 
mishaps to complain of. A desire to add to the 
adornments of the college campus, and also to spend 
out-of-doors one of the golden days of Indian 
summer, led us once to the performance of a mask, 
* Homage to Nature,' to which the only objection 
was that, as all the students took part, there were 

' A. A. Wood, in the Century Magazine. 



Wells College 191 

few to see what a pretty sight it was. The students 
wore the academic gown, each class of its own 
colour; and each had special trees or shrubs to 
plant in chosen spots on the campus, and crocuses 
to put everywhere in the green grass. In this par- 
ticular mask the Nymph of Castalia, Aurora, the 
Goddess Maia, and Diana with her nymphs and 
dryads dispute as to which has the best right to 
lead the students to communion with nature. These 
mortals render homage to the disputants in turn, 
with singing, dancing, and dialogue — and all join 
in the planting. As the groups moved from place 
to place that day on our stately campus, the effect 
of the red, white, purple, and yellow gowns, some- 
times scattered, sometimes blended, was beautiful. 
To be sure, the weather made a slight mistake, and, 
instead of soft Indian summer, it was bleak Novem- 
ber, so that under those light floating gowns there 
had to be cloaks and furs, and the songstresses had 
fears for their throats; but there were good fires 
and hot coffee indoors afterward, and no harm was 
done, and ever since Nature's Mask has been a 
delight to read of and to look back upon." 

A very important feature of the academic life at 
Wells is the fine series of concerts given each year 
by the members of the Faculty of Music, with the 
assistance of artists of repute from abroad. Special 



192 The College Girl of America 

features of these concerts are the performance of 
such works in chamber music as trios, quartettes, 
and quintettes of the great masters. Lectures on 
musical subjects and concerts by artists of renown 
are of frequent occurrence. During the more recent 
years the Httle college on Cayuga Lake has been 
visited by De Pachmann, Adele Aus der Ohe, Helen 
Hopkirk, Madame Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler, the 
New York Philharmonic Club, the Beethoven String 
Quartette, E. A. MacDowell, Arthur Foote, Lillian 
Blauvelt, and many other distinguished musicians. 
The Wells Philharmonic Club is in charge of these 
recitals and concerts. 

Of other clubs there are several, perhaps the most 
important being the Phoenix Literarium Societas, 
which holds a charter from the State of New York 
and is made up of members chosen for scholarship 
and literary ability. The work of this society is 
of a practical character, and aims to create or pro- 
mote interest in good literature or in literary 
style and expression. Wells has twO' college settle- 
ment chapters, through which knowledge is spread 
and interest deepened in methods of increasing the 
spirit of universal brotherhood and of mutual obli- 
gation. A branch of the Young Woman's Christian 
Association likewise does good work. 

Thus it will be seen that Wells College is very 



Wells College 193 

faithfully executing the trust committed to it by 
its founder, in that it is feminine in every way. 
Such a thing as a college yell has never been heard 
within its walls. It cultivates instead serene self- 
poise and all those virtues and qualities which may 
be held to be inseparable from the highest intellec- 
tual womanhood. 



ROCKFORD COLLEGE 

On a high bluff above Rock River, ninety miles 
northwest of Chicago, in the midst of a wooded 
campus of nine or ten acres, stands Rockford Col- 
lege, almost the smallest, yet in many ways the 
most interesting, of the women's colleges of Amer- 
ica. For the story of Rockford College is the story 
of our Middle West. The founding of the school 
was an expression of the enthusiasm for the higher 
education of both men and women, and of the ar- 
dour for missionary work which characterized the 
people of this country during the second quarter 
of the nineteenth century. Amherst College and 
Mt. Holyoke Seminary in the East had its counter- 
part in Beloit College and Rockford Seminary in 
the Northwest. For it was in the convention of 
1844 that the Congregational and Presbyterian 
churches of Wisconsin and Illinois passed the fol- 
lowing resolution : that " The exigencies of Wis- 
consin and northern Illinois require that those sec- 
tions should unite in establishing a college and a 

female seminary of the highest order, the one in 

194 



J 



A ROCKFORD GIRL 



Rockford College I95 

Wisconsin near to Illinois, and the other in Illinois 
near to Wisconsin." As a result of this determina- 
tion, Beloit was selected as the location of the col- 
lege, and, not long afterward, Rockford was fixed 
upon as the site of the seminary, the citizens of the 
place pledging suitable grounds for the school and 
contributing thirty-five hundred dollars toward the 
expense of building. 

The seminary type of girls' school stood at that 
time for the best that was known in women's edu- 
cation. It was, therefore, in the name of a semi- 
nary that a charter was granted to the trustees 
of Rockford, though from the first the institution 
had full collegiate powers. Owing, however, to 
such business reverses as often overtake a frontier 
town, the pledges that had been so generously made 
could not at once be met, and it was not until July 
II, 1849, that there could be even a beginning 
toward opening the school. On that day Miss Anna 
P. Sill organized the preparatory establishment that 
became the nucleus of Rockford Seminary. 

Miss Sill, who had been preceptress of the 
woman's department in Gary Collegiate Institute 
of Oakfield, western New York, had come to Rock- 
ford on the invitation of the Congregational pastor 
there. She was a young woman of splendid phy- 
sique, and of distinguished beauty, and had been 



196 The College Girl of America 

possessed by an earnest desire to become a foreign 
missionary. Finding this impracticable for vari- 
ous reasons, she welcomed the call to the West as 
to a destitute field where she was vitally needed. 
The fact that this beautiful young woman had 
come hundreds of miles to do good undoubtedly had 
its effect upon her pupils. Certainly they went to 
work with a will, though discouragements were still 
manifold. " The seats," one of the members of that 
first class has written, " were low and uncouth 
affairs, and the sun came in glaringly from the win- 
dows, causing much complaint. But the teacher had 
an iron will. She opened a modest boarding-house, 
and, with the funds thus gained, improved the school- 
room, bought the books needed, placed curtains on 
the windows, and prevailed upon the scholars to 
supply desks." The success of the school was so 
immediate, and its growth so marked, that larger 
accommodations were soon required. Whereupon 
the citizens of Rockford rose superior to all their 
financial discouragements and subscribed five thou- 
sand dollars for buildings. The women of Rock- 
ford raised one thousand dollars more, and with this 
the college campus was purchased. 

The first class, numbering fifteen, began work in 
1 85 1. " Even after the new seminary building was 
opened," Mrs. Ainsworth, principal of Rockford 



Rockford College 197 

from 1 89 1 to 1896, has written, " the discomforts 
of living*, which, we are told, were accepted with 
philosophical cheerfulness for the most part, seem 
quite appalling to us now. The rooms were un- 
carpeted, though the catalogues advised that room- 
mates might club together and carpet them if they 
chose. The heating was ostensibly done by tiny 
wood stoves, the capacity of which for blowing hot 
and cold was phenomenal. No fuel could be added 
after eight o'clock — a wise rule caused by dread 
of conflagrations. Four girls and a teacher were 
sometimes in a room now occupied by one person. 
The students performed the work of the house. 
Of necessity the table was not liberal." 

All these privations were, however, counted as 
nothing if by any means the ideal toward which the 
students were striving, with such splendid en- 
thusiasm, and through such agony of endeavour, 
could be attained. No sacrifice was regarded as too 
costly for this end, either on the part of the citizens 
of Rockford, or on the part of Miss Sill and her 
coworkers. Of pupils certainly there was no lack. 
After the structure now known as Middle Hall had 
been put up, a hundred applicants were refused for 
lack of room. 

But there could be no new building just then, for 
the resources of Rockford seemed exhausted, and 



igB The College Girl of America 

Miss Sill's health had begun to give way. We are 
told that she went to the East in December, 1853, 
for the double purpose of recruiting her strength 
and obtaining funds. In the latter object she was 
admirably successful, for she returned with about 
five thousand dollars, a large sum for those days, 
and with this the foundation of another building 
was laid, money being borrowed to complete the 
work. Again, largely through Miss Sill's personal 
efforts, ten thousand dollars was raised in the West. 
The teachers, too, pledged one thousand dollars out 
of their own meagre salaries, and New England 
once more came to the rescue. Thus it was that the 
erection of Middle Hall in 1852 was followed in two 
years by the building of Linden Hall. In 1866 
Chapel Hall went up. The entire amount ex- 
pended for these earlier buildings, with their equip- 
ment, was about seventy-five thousand dollars, of 
which Rockford and its immediate vicinity gave 
two-thirds. Then, in the winter of 1886, Sill Hall 
was completed with funds almost entirely provided 
by the citizens of Rockford. This building has a 
gymnasium on its second floor, and music-rooms on 
the first floor. 

The number of edifices erected during Miss Sill's 
lifetime has now been told. But, for the sake of 
clearness and completeness in this connection, it is 



Rockford College 199 

to be noted that in the fall of 1892 Adams Hall, 
a fine modern building, costing about thirty-five 
thousand dollars, and having accommodations for 
laboratories and recitation-rooms, and in 1891 
Memorial Hall, a students' residence, were added to 
the college equipment. " Their total cost," writes 
Mrs. Ainsworth, '* has not been great, reckoned by- 
recent expenditures for educational uses, yet, as re- 
gards the proportion of the gifts to the means of 
the givers, the sums have been greater than are 
often bestowed upon a school." Again and again, 
in reading the story and observing the life of Rock- 
ford College, one is reminded of the widow's mite 
parable. 

Miss Sill, the first principal of the seminary, con- 
tinued actively in this office until the summer of 
1884, when she resigned; but, as principal emerita, 
she retained her connection with the institution until 
1889. Then she died under the roof that her own 
strength and devotion had reared. 

Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago, who 
was graduated from Rockford College in 188 1, and 
stands to-day, perhaps, as the institution's most 
imposing representative, wrote of Miss Sill at the 
time of her death : " From the very first we owe 
to her whom we mourn to-day with such heavy 
hearts the highest grace any institution can possess. 



200 The College Girl of America 

Miss Sill gave our college that strong religious 
tone which it has always retained. She came to 
Illinois in an unselfish spirit — not to build up a 
large school, not to make an intellectual centre, but 
to train the young women of a new country for 
Christian usefulness. Unaffectedly and thoroughly 
she made that her aim. 

" The spiritual so easily speaks over all other 
voices that it arrests us at once. We travel the 
world over to find the spots associated with the 
humble soul, singly striving to unite itself with the 
Unseen. Salisbury Plain, with magnificent Stone- 
henge, fails to stir us as does the tiny church on 
the edge of it, on whose porch George Herbert 
mused and prayed. So we are bound by the ten- 
derest ties to perpetuate this primitive spiritual 
purpose — Miss Sill's life-motive. It will be easy 
to do this — we cannot do otherwise ; it is asso- 
ciated with this spot by her long life, and made 
bright by her gentle death. Why did Thackeray 
put dear old Colonel Newcombe into the Charter 
House School to die, but that he wished to give 
to his Alma Mater the most exquisite finish, the 
most consummate grace his genius could devise — 
to associate with It for ever the passing from earth 
of a gentle, unselfish spirit whose work was fin- 
ished. Providence has granted us this grace, and 



Rockford College 20i 

whatever good fortune the future may hold for us, 
nothing can be finer than that we have already." 

To the seminary curriculum was added, in 1882, 
a collegiate course of study, and from that time 
on all students who had completed the requisite 
amount of work received the degree of A. B. But 
in June, 1891, the board of trustees decided to dis- 
continue the seminary course, and the following 
year the name of the institution was legally changed 
from Rockford Seminary to Rockford College. 
Beginning with the class of 1896, all graduates of 
Rockford have been college graduates. 

All through its history, Rockford College has had 
the benefit of the trustee service of broad-minded 
men and women. The present board worthily rep- 
resents a long line of illustrious predecessors. Rock- 
ford has sent out hundreds of noble graduates 
during its history, and has touched, for a longer 
or shorter period, the lives of thousands of girls 
who, as missionaries, as teachers, as wives and 
mothers, have gone all over this land and to foreign 
countries. To the presence of the college, more- 
over, may be attributed the unusual number of 
cultivated women in the city of Rockford, the 
marked musical preeminence of the place, and its 
general high tone. Under the present president, 
Miss Julia H. Gulliver, Ph. D., — to whom I am 



202 The College Girl of America 

indebted for the material contained in this chapter, 
— the inspiring influence of the institution is 
notable. 

As to the present ideals of the college — the end 
and aim, for the students, of all the varied activities 
of the place, is that they may have life, and that 
they may have it more abundantly. The college is 
characterized by a homelike atmosphere, and it is 
the intent to keep the life ever normal, simple, and 
free from worry and friction. " We believe first 
of all in a glad heart and a quiet mind," the pres- 
ident has said. 

The system of self-government, which has been 
in operation two years now, works increasingly 
well. All matters pertaining to house discipline, to 
chapel and church attendance, are in the hands of 
the students, and the success of the entire experi- 
ment — for it has been successful — is undoubtedly 
due to the high honour and confidence accorded 
by the girls to the faculty, who are regarded as 
public servants ready to take upon themselves on- 
erous duties for the sake of helping the student 
body to preserve and maintain the freedom that 
comes from self-control. The system of self-gov- 
ernment has produced a truly delightful relationship 
between the faculty and students. The individuality 
of each student is carefully studied, and no effort 



Rockford College 203 

is spared on the teachers' part to develop the best 
of which each girl is capable. 

Gymnastic work is required, as is also out-of-door 
exercise. Clubs for tennis, fencing, basket-ball, and 
other games flourish, though the greatest care is 
taken that no girl shall overtax her health. The 
success of the College Glee Club, which includes 
nearly the whole of the student body, has been 
especially noteworthy during the past year, and the 
Kappa Theta and Chi Theta Psi societies have 
likewise done much to make life at the college 
attractive. 

A highly characteristic annual event at Rockford 
College is the Washington's Birthday party, for 
which the Chi Theta Psi girls plan every detail, and 
upon the unfailing success of which they are cer- 
tainly greatly to be congratulated. Like the maiden 
in the garden of the old song, the Rockford College 
girl " in her petticoat of satin and her gaily flowered 
gown " is a vision long to be remembered. Not less 
stately and elegant is her sister, who impersonates 
the fine gentleman of the long ago. Together they 
bring back the spirit of Colonial days, and transform 
the Western college, for a brief space, at least, into 
a veritable old-time mansion. The festivities begin 
with a six o'clock dinner. At its close there is a 
programme of patriotic speeches, interspersed with 



204 The College Girl of America 

the drinking of toasts in sparkling (?) grape juice, 
the president of the college acting as toastmistress. 
Later comes a dancing programme in the gym- 
nasium, which has been simply but beautifully 
decorated with flags, and provides an appropriate 
setting for the charming colour effects produced by 
the girls' costumes. The " ball " is opened with the 
grand march — a succession of intricate figures ex- 
ecuted with much dignity and stateliness. At its 
conclusion eight chosen couples dance the minuet. 
Their grace of motion, their beauty of form, and 
the charm of their old-fashioned garb make this 
dance a real delight to the beholder, a picture to be 
treasured in memory and recalled with keenest 
pleasure whenever Rockford College is mentioned. 

The life of the Rockford of to-day is connected 
very closely and very normally with the life of 
the town which made the college possible, and fes- 
tivals on the campus are town celebrations — 
almost. For the senior play everybody turns out. 
Last year's offering was " The Tempest." This 
charming comedy, presented in the sunset light of 
a Commencement afternoon, could not have had a 
more attractive stage-setting than was furnished by 
the fine old trees and green shrubbery of the grounds 
just north of the terrace. The class of 1903 had 
put a great deal of time and painstaking effort into 



Rockford College 205 

their presentation, and that their endeavours were 
appreciated was attested by the interested attention 
of the large audience. From the moment that Pros- 
pero and Miranda first came upon the stage, the 
magic spell of the text seemed to cast itself upon 
the onlookers, who followed as if they were in 
veritable fairyland the speeches of the beautiful 
Ariel, the dance of the fairies in the fourth act, the 
stilling of the tempest, and the final opening of the 
eyes of the spellbound and shipwrecked mariners. 
When it was all over, Rockford had fairly to pinch 
itself to get awake to real things. But we may be 
sure that the worthy citizens were very happy as 
they wended their way homeward, and very glad 
that fifty-five years ago they established this girls' 
college in their community. 



MILLS COLLEGE 

What Wellesley and Smith, Vassar, Mt. Hol- 
yoke, and Bryn Mawr have been to the States along 
the Atlantic coast, Mills College in California 
aspires to be to the Pacific States. Though its 
authorities recognize fully the immense service 
Stanford and the University of California are doing 
in the education of young women, they apprehend 
also that there is a big place in their part of the 
country for a girls' college to fill. Coeducation, 
with all its advantages, is not acceptable to all 
parents desiring college training for their daughters, 
nor does it supply the place of a distinctly woman's 
college. 

Almost by the right of inheritance, it would ap- 
pear, should Mills be given in the West a place 
similar to that held by Mt. Holyoke in the East. 
For the founder and president of this college was 
herself one of the earliest graduates of Mt. Holyoke 
Seminary. Susan Tolman Mills was born at Enos- 
burg, Vermont, seventy-eight years ago, of parents 

who were both of such loyal Massachusetts stock 

206 



Mills College 207 

that they returned to their native State when their 
child was ten years old, and settled in Ware, in 
order that she might have the benefit of the good 
schools of that place. Two years later Mrs. Tolman 
died, leaving a dying request that her little girl 
should be educated under Mary Lyon. This re- 
quest was carefully regarded, and in 1845 Susan 
finished her course at Mt. Holyoke. The following 
year she returned to the seminary as a teacher. Very 
soon, however, there came to her the call to be 
the head of a home, and in September, 1848, she 
was married to Rev. Cyrus T. Mills, a missionary 
ordered to Ceylon. The young couple sailed at once 
for their foreign post, compassing the journey, it is 
interesting to note, only after a voyage which lasted 
one hundred and forty-three days. 

From the first Mrs. Mills's work abroad was of 
an educational nature. She was associated with her 
husband in the Batticotta College, Ceylon, — an 
institution for the education of native teachers and 
preachers, — and she also had charge of several day- 
schools for girls. But, after six years of this, fail- 
ing health obliged both her husband and herself 
to return to America. And even at the conclusion 
of the two years of rest which followed, physicians 
forbade their going back to the foreign field. Ere 
long another congenial door opened to Doctor Mills 



2o8 The College Girl of America 

in the form of a call to the presidency of Oahu 
College in the Hawaiian Islands. This he gladly 
accepted, and, in that institution, established espe- 
cially for the education of the sons and daughters 
of missionaries and other foreign residents, Mrs. 
Mills filled for four years the position of professor 
of natural science and English, and had also the 
care of the boarding department of about fifty. But 
here again failing health, impaired by life and 
labours in India, compelled them to return to 
America. 

Yet they were not discouraged. Indeed, one of 
the first things that they did upon arriving in Cali- 
fornia in 1865 was to purchase the Benecia Sem- 
inary of Mary Atkins, and enter with great en- 
thusiasm upon the work of there educating young 
ladies after the highest Christian ideals. The spot 
which they had chosen for their school was cer- 
tainly a charming one, and the new buildings which 
they erected were worthy of the task to which they 
earnestly set themselves. A curious happening, we 
are told, had strengthened their resolution to push 
the thing forward at once. They had been trying 
to decide whether they would follow up the new 
educational opportunity or stop to take the rest both 
sadly needed, when Mrs. Mills chanced upon these 
lines of a poem called " Finish Thy Work " : 



Mills College 209 

" Finish thy work ; the time is short, 
The sun is in the west ; 
The night is coming down ; till then 
Think not of rest. 

" Yes, finish all thy work, then rest ; 
Till then, rest never ; 
The rest prepared for thee by God 
Is rest forever. 

" Finish thy work, then wipe thy brow, 
Ungird thee from the toil ; 
Take breath, and from each weary limb 
Shake off the soil. 

" Finish thy work, then sit thee down 
On some celestial hill, 
And of its strength-reviving air 
Take thou thy fill. 

" Finish thy work, then go in peace, 
Life's battle fought and won ; 
Hear from the throne the Master's voice, 
« Well done ! well done ! ' " 

Obediently Mrs. Mills and her husband went on 
to " finish their work," devoting to the noble in- 
stitution which is now Mills College their entire 
fortune and the strength of their mature years. 
And, when the place had risen to wide renown, 
they deeded the property to a board of trustees 
who should hold it forever for the highest Chris- 
tian (but not sectarian) education of women. 



210 The College Girl of America 

In all his plans and efforts for the college Doctor 
Mills was ably assisted by his wife. Thus, when 
he died in 1884, she was found to be thoroughly 
competent to direct successfully the affairs of the 
institution they had built up together. Under her 
efficient management the work has steadily ad- 
vanced in every desirable direction, a college curric- 
ulum being added in 1885, and a college charter, 
with power to confer degrees, received from the 
State. During Mrs. Mills's administration three 
fine buildings and twenty-five acres of ground have 
been acquired, making the entire campus now one 
hundred and fifty acres, upon which flourish more 
than seventy-five thousand trees, many of them of 
that superb variety for which California is justly 
noted. At the urgent request of the trustees, Mrs. 
Mills still continues in the presidency of the college. 
She is far more, too, than executive head of the 
institution — though she is that, even to the extent 
of attending to correspondence; she is its loving 
mother and patron. More than four thousand young 
women have found in her a true friend and coun- 
sellor as well as an able teacher, and many of her 
former pupils are now proving their loving appre- 
ciation of her helpful kindness by placing their 
daughters under her tender yet stimulating care. 

If only for its healthful properties — out-of-door 




BASKET-BALL TEAM. 




A RIDE WITH " MICHAEL, THE FAITHFUL 



Mills College 211 

athletics are possible all the year round — Mills 
College should strongly appeal to very many girls 
who desire the higher education. In a recent number 
of the United States Health Bulletin there was 
printed, quite without solicitation on the part of 
Mills, this splendid endorsement : *' The United 
States Health Bulletin has had occasion to examine 
quite extensively during the past few months into 
the condition of schools and colleges, and, if some 
of the facts that have come to our notice during 
these investigations were generally known, we be- 
lieve that prospective patrons would be shocked at 
the unsanitary and disease-breeding conditions 
existing at some schools. We have no hesitation, 
however, in recommending to our readers Mills 
College, Seminary Park, California. This met with 
the warm approval of the experts investigating these 
matters for us. If the same care is taken with the 
mental welfare of the pupil as is shown, and plainly 
shown, to be taken with the physical, we feel that it 
deserves the support of parents and the encourage- 
ment of the public." 

Both these last valuable aids to growth are now 
being given freely to Mills. Within the past two 
months some forty thousand dollars has been sub- 
scribed toward the one million dollars of endowment 
to which the institution is bending all its energies. 



212 The College Girl of America 

The feeling is growing rapidly that a college de- 
voted solely to the higher education of women is 
an imperative necessity upon the Pacific coast. And 
it is further felt that such an institution of learning 
can best be built upon the noble beginning already 
made at Mills. At present, unfortunately, the col- 
lege — because of lack of income-bearing funds — 
costs a good deal, it being next to impossible for a 
girl to get through on less than four hundred dollars 
a year. Moreover, the liberal arts department is 
now rather overweighted with a preparatory school, 
which always seems a pity for a degree-bestowing 
institution. Mills fully realizes these defects, how- 
ever, and is remedying them as fast as in it lies. 

What a unique place it has to fill can be gathered 
from this letter recently published in La Democracia, 
a Manila newspaper, by a young Filipino now study- 
ing at the University of Michigan. This young man 
spent a short time on his way eastward at Mills 
College, where his cousin and another of his coun- 
trywomen — the only Filipino girls to come as yet 
to America for their education — are students. 
The letter was of course printed in Spanish. It 
runs: 

" As I chanced to come to the United States on 
the same steamer which brought two Filipino young 
women, I availed myself of the opportunity to 



Mills College 213 

become acquainted with this seat of learning for 
women, which, as I learn from my American 
friends, is the best on the Western coast. Even 
before leaving the steamer we could perceive the 
excellent working system of this college. The 
young women of whom I speak came without other 
care than that given by passengers to whom they 
had been casually recommended, and they would, 
doubtless, have felt quite deserted upon arriving 
in San Francisco had they not seen upon the dock 
a professor and two students from the college. The 
friends took charge of the young women as soon 
as they were fairly on land, telling them that they 
were about an hour's ride from the college by ferry, 
steam-cars, and electric tramway. 

" When I went to call upon the young ladies 
at the college I was presented to Mrs. Mills, who 
inquires personally about all visitors to students, 
keeping carefully in mind the wishes of the parents 
and guardians. Mrs. Mills, who is seventy-eight 
years of age, preserves sufficient vigour of mind 
and body to direct all the affairs of this large 
institution. As for the college buildings, they are 
six in number, and are situated in a valley shut in 
by lofty hills. The grounds cover one hundred 
and fifty acres. The buildings consist of the main 



214 The College Girl of America 

dormitory, recitation building, a science-hall with 
its museum, a music-hall, and so on. 

" But it must not be thought that the main build- 
ing is a mere dormitory ; the community life is not 
exaggerated. Outside the hours for recitation and 
study, the students are, within reasonable limits, their 
own guardians, and may amuse themselves and take 
exercise according to their tastes. The students have, 
each two of them, a room with a dressing-room 
which they keep in order themselves. This room 
is sitting-room, bedroom (two beds), and study. 
Of the girls now here, eighteen or nineteen are 
from Honolulu, two are Parisians, a few are from 
the Eastern States, and one is a South American. 
All the rest, with the exception of my country- 
women, are from neighbouring States and Terri- 
tories. 

" The college is non-sectarian, yet I noticed pic- 
tures of Madonnas, which seemed, as it were, a 
recognition of the source of all religions. The 
Roman Catholic students have at their disposal a 
carriage which takes them to a church of their 
own faith in the nearest town. ... I feel that 
matters at home are undergoing such changes, espe- 
cially as regards education, that I believe what I 
have here written may be of great interest to those 
families who desire to send their daughters to this 



Mills College 215 

country to be educated. Moreover, the climate of 
the college is milder even than in San Francisco." 
The latest addition to the Mills College buildings 
is the Campanile, just erected to contain a mag- 
nificent chime of bells, presented by Hon. David 
Hewes some time ago, but called " the silent ten " 
because there was no place in which their music 
could be heard. The tower is after the old mission 
style, and its door with the quaint lock and nails 
came from an old Spanish church in Mexico. On the 
building (presented by Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Smith 
of Oakland) is a tablet with this beautiful in- 
scription : 

" IN LOYAL REMEMBRANCE OF THOSE 

WHO BY TONGUE OR PEN, 

BY GENEROUS GIFT OR NOBLE DEED 

HAVE AIDED WOMAN 

ON HER UPWARD WAY, THESE 

BELLS CHIME ON." 

Following the pretty custom of naming the bells, 
their donor desired that they should be called after 
the graces of the spirit as found in Galatians. Thus 
the four that ring the chimes are Faith, Hope, 
Peace, and Joy. The greatest of the bells is Love, 
and the smallest Meekness. The others are Gentle- 
ness, Goodness, Self-Control, and Long-Suffering. 
At the close of the impressive exercises of dedica- 



2i6 The College Girl of America 

tion, it was fittingly pointed out that the music 
of these bells, like that of the graduates of Mills 
College, is heard alone in action, that the bells, 
too, respond with sweet promptitude to each new 
call of duty, and that their joy, like that of con- 
secrated educated womanhood, is above all else the 
joy of service. 



SIMMONS COLLEGE 

Simmons College is the newest of the important 
educational institutions provided for American girls. 
In scope it is like nothing else, not even like the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which it 
has been most often compared. In truth, Simmons 
is a technical college, with the combination of edu- 
cation and industry as its chief aim, and the desire 
to produce women at once cultivated and able to 
serve as its highest ambition. The college was 
established in 1900 by the will of John Simmons 
of Boston, who had died some thirty years before, 
leaving the bulk of his fortune for an institution in 
which should be given instruction in such branches 
of art, science, and industry as would best enable 
women to earn an independent livelihood. 

The money left by Mr. Simmons was allowed to 
accumulate during the years between his death and 
the opening of the college for instruction in Octo- 
ber, 1902. And not funds alone were piling up 
all this time; there was being accumulated also 

that wealth of experience and intelligent apprecia- 

217 



2i8 The College Girl of America 

tion of modern needs, which has been freely drawn 
upon to make Simmons what it is. 

Generally speaking, this institution supplies train- 
ing in lines along which women have heretofore 
had little or no opportunity for study. Yet it is 
because Simmons has so successfully coalesced the 
academic and the technical (by cutting out the least 
important subjects in each) as really to give a girl 
in four years the essentials of a liberal education 
as well as professional training, that the institu- 
tion is uniquely appealing. The pupils here are 
grouped in diverse schools, according to the pro- 
fessional work which they are aiming to adopt. 
Of these schools there are at present six : A, School 
of Household Economics; B, Secretarial School; 
C, Library School ; D, School of Science ; E, School 
of Horticulture; F, School of Social Workers. In 
each one of these schools the course is mainly pre- 
scribed, technical work beginning, however, at the 
outset, and gradually increasing with the pro- 
gressive years. As, on the other hand, the girl 
approaches the end of her course, her work becomes 
all the time less and less academic. 

That Simmons really meets a very great need 
in the educational world is shown by the fact that, 
although it has never yet graduated a class, and 
although it has up to the present time been at a 



Simmons College 219 

great disadvantage in that it has lacked an adequate 
plant (its fine new building opens next year), it 
has already two hundred and fifty students. On 
the day when it opened its doors, there were eighty- 
five girls waiting to come in. No student, it should 
be understood, is taken for technical work only 
unless she has already had an academic training; 
during the year just closing there were studying at 
this college twenty-seven graduates of other insti- 
tutions of the first rank. 

President Thwing early said of the institution 
that he thought college graduates would be the first 
to appreciate it. And his prophecy has been proved 
quite true. In the School of Household Economics, 
especially, there has been a large registration of 
women already possessed of a degree. The courses 
here provide adequate preparation for directing the 
home, administering an institution, or for teaching 
the technical subjects included in household econ- 
omics. The dean of the college, Miss Sarah Louise 
Arnold, A. M., is the director of this department. 
The trend of the work here accomplished may, per- 
haps, best be suggested by saying that once a week 
Miss Arnold talks to the students about whatever 
is newest and most arresting in present-day thought 
concerning the household. The apostles of the 
" freedom " of women are then discussed, and the 



220 The College Girl of America 

girls are shown that to be free in the highest sense 
means to be free to serve. The spiritual value 
of household service is also considered; perhaps 
Lowell's " She hath no scorn of common things " 
is quoted to help make the point at issue. Simmons 
finds it by no means impossible to unite the scientific 
and the spiritual. 

In the Secretarial School is taught all that goes 
to produce a well-rounded, intelligent, and thor- 
oughly-equipped secretary, who can be of real value 
to persons engaged in scientific, literary or profes- 
sional pursuit. Experience has shown that a gen- 
erous academic training should accompany the tech- 
nical work in preparation for secretarial duties, and 
for this reason the regular programme provides in- 
struction in branches that make for culture, as well 
as in shorthand, typewriting, and business methods. 
Moreover the two things in every case go together. 
Simmons does not invite girls who wish to learn 
merely the trade parts of a secretary's work. For 
this reason shorthand and typewriting work by itself 
is open only to college graduates. 

One thing about this college which strikes the 
girl from Smith or Vassar as exceedingly strange 
at first, is that attendance is required at all college 
exercises, the student being expected to render a 
very adequate excuse to the Dean, whenever she has 



Simmons College 221 

been absent from class. Moreover, no student 
whose attendance is especially irregular is allowed 
to continue in a class. From the Simmons' point 
of view, this rule is quite reasonable. The college 
feels that it is its definite trust to prepare young 
women for self-maintenance. Loyalty to this trust 
demands that every girl the college turns out must 
be equal to the responsibilities of service. Now this 
can be true, it is argued, only when an employer 
may be guaranteed that the girl recommended to 
him has a true sense of her duty in the matter of 
promptness and regularity. In order to fit a girl for 
the work in which she is to enlist, every absence, 
therefore, during her college course, must be defi- 
nitely explained. The spirit which the college is 
honestly trying to inculcate is, perhaps, best ex- 
pressed in the closing lines of a hymn just written 
for the undergraduates, by Miss Arnold : 

" Make us, thy children, strong, pure and just. 
Send us to labour, when leave thee we must 
Ready for service and worthy of trusts"* 

Of the Library School, which trains students to 
serve as assistants in large libraries, or to assume 
charge of small libraries; of the School of Science, 
designed for those who wish to prepare themselves 
for teaching science or for assisting in scientific 



222 The College Girl of America 

departments; of the School of Horticulture, which 
will give theoretical training in Boston, with the 
third or fourth years at the Massachusetts Agricul- 
tural College in Amherst, I shall not speak at any 
length. But of the School for Social Workers, I 
wish to give some sketch, inasmuch as its scope and 
organization is very far from clear to many in- 
terested people. 

The purpose of this school is to give opportunities 
to men and women to study social problems by 
practical methods, and it will bring together students 
and workers who are considering, from various 
points of view, the many problems which are of 
concern to all. Its course begins in October, 1904, 
and will cover one academic year. In the future, 
however, the training will form the fourth year of 
a regular Simmons College course, leading to grad- 
uation, and ultimately, probably, to the degree B. S. 
The organization of this school came about rather 
curiously. To start such a department, was one of 
Simmons's plans from the beginning, but when the 
trustees got around to the matter, they found that 
some of the charity organizations of Boston wanted 
to have a stake in just such a school, and had al- 
ready done something toward the project. These 
organizations were anxious that men as well as 
women should have opportunity to be trained in 



Simmons College 223 

this way, and Harvard was named as a possible aid. 
President Eliot, when consulted on the subject, 
expressed his willingness to cooperate with Sim- 
mons in the matter of such a school, and the result 
of it all was a plan by which men who desire to 
study in the School for Social Workers register 
at Harvard, and girls desirous of taking the same 
course enrol themselves at Simmons. 

One-third of the students at Simmons College are 
in residence, their single dormitory house being 
a very pleasant four-story brick building near the 
Public Library and the Art Museum. Here, for 
about two hundred and fifty dollars a year, a girl 
lives in great comfort. Tuition at Simmons being 
one hundred dollars a year, no girl need spend more 
than three hundred and fifty dollars annually, ob- 
taining an admirable education. Life in Simmons 
Hall is in many ways delightful. Every evening 
after dinner there is dancing for an hour in the 
large assembly-room on the ground floor; from 
half-past seven to half-past nine are study hours 
(during which time the halls must be quiet) ; be- 
tween half-past nine and ten there is always fun of 
many sorts going on. At half-past ten lights are 
out. Saturday evening is the off-night; it has no 
study hours. Then there is almost always some 
frolic to the fore. Sometimes this takes the form 



224 The College Girl of America 

of a shadow-party, at another time it will be " Alice 
in Wonderland " illustrated. On Hallowe'en Sim- 
mons girls had a sheet-and-pillow-case party, to 
which everybody came masked. The room was 
dark, Jack-o'-lanterns supplying the only illumina- 
tion, while the refreshments served were of the real 
up-country variety — apples, pop-corn, and dough- 
nuts. 

Not without design was this house in the heart 
of the city chosen. The close human contact such 
a situation entails was felt to be most important, 
inasmuch as many of the girls who come to Sim- 
mons are from the country, and would have no 
opportunity, did they not get it while in college, 
to learn the best and wisest ways of conducting 
themselves in a large city. 

But it is in work rather than In play that Sim- 
mons girls are chiefly interested. Unlike college 
girls in general, they have, when they enter, a clear 
conception of what they wish to do with their lives. 



NEWCOMB AND OTHER COLLEGES OF 
THE SOUTH 

There is no more striking commentary on the 
" new time " in the South than is suppHed by the 
H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, — the 
woman's department of Tulane University, Louisi- 
ana. Before the war, the South kept pace with the 
North in the matter of education; and it endorsed 
" coeducation " quite as early as did any college in 
the country. But schools went down in the general 
crash of institutions, and a period of ignorance, 
amounting — in the case of girls, at any rate — to 
a sort of " dark age," ensued. The North, mean- 
time, got about a quarter of a century's start. It 
is hardly to be expected that the South can so soon 
have made up that long time disadvantage; that it 
has so nearly done so may fairly enough be called 
a marvel. 

In reconstruction times the public schools South 
were open to whites and negroes alike. The radi- 
cal government of carpet-baggers insisted on mix- 
ing the races, and so repugnant was this to the preju- 

225 



226 The College Girl of America 

diced Southerner, that all who could afford to pay 
sent their boys and girls to private schools. Here 
was a field for the reduced Southern gentlewoman, 
and many a one overhauled her learning for the 
benefit of a new generation, and set up an establish- 
ment of little practical value, where accomplish- 
ments were instilled in a refined but wholly super- 
ficial way into the daughters of the Southern aris- 
tocracy. In the absence of system and discipline, 
it is little w'onder that education in these mistresses* 
schools fell into a decline. 'Hot did the public 
schools fare much better. Certainly they were not 
able to give good training to refined young women. 
Southern girls were quite unready, therefore, for 
advanced education when, under the supervision of 
President Brandt V. D. Dixon, the nucleus of the 
Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was first estab- 
lished. At that time Latin was not taught in the 
public schools, and of the thirty applicants for ad- 
mission to the new college, there were scarcely six 
who could have passed a respectable high school 
entrance examination. So it was with very scant 
pupil material that the future great college of the 
South opened its doors. Its aims were only vaguely 
outlined at the beginning. But it had at its head 
a master whose ideals were fixed high, and who 
meant that this school should expand rapidly. 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 227 

The young women of the South took readily to 
the idea of higher education, and from the single 
building given by Mrs. Josephine Louise Newcomb, 
in memory of an only daughter, the college plant 
rapidly expanded. President Dixon soon found 
himself possessed of a pleasant charge. Daughters 
of brilliant and famous leaders of the Confederacy 
came to him, and proved their inheritance by a sur- 
prising grasp and aptness in learning. Languages 
and sciences were easy for them, for they were en- 
dowed with many natural gifts. In a few years 
the college buildings had spread over an entire 
square, several acres in extent, on Washington 
Avenue, Camp, Chestnut, and Sixth Streets, New 
Orleans, and behind the whole movement stood the 
gracious Mrs. N'ewcomb, meeting the financial de- 
mands promptly, and cheerfully acquiescing, as the 
president's ideas evolved, in the noble and far- 
reaching plans his fertile brain created. 

To-day Newcomb College is practically on a par 
with Vassar and the great women's colleges of the 
North. Its entrance examinations are nearly the 
same. Four hundred young w'omen from the South- 
ern States, as far north as Kentucky, come to this 
Mecca of learning. 

Geographically considered, no college in the South 
can hope to rival Newcomb or even compete with it. 



228 The College Girl of America 

Its position ensures its future. For, situated as it 
is, at the tip end of the continent, it cannot but 
command the attention of the country south of it, 
across the stretch of water which separates the 
Americas. Already students have come here from 
Cuba and Mexico, and it is safe to predict that Cen- 
tral and South American republics will fall duly 
into line. New Orleans is accessible from all parts 
of the South, and the educational facilities to be 
enjoyed in its libraries and museums have, no 
doubt, contributed in considerable degree to the suc- 
cess of Newcomb College. 

President Dixon, too, has been a very important 
factor in the institution's growth. He is preemi- 
nently fitted for the position he occupies, for, besides 
being a scholar and a philosopher, he has unusual 
sympathy for the sex he has essayed to teach. The 
discussion concerning the " new " woman he has 
summed up thus sensibly : " The woman's college 
is no longer to pose as an imitation. There is no 
need of rivalry between the sexes. Up to a certain 
point the same training answers for both; beyond 
that their courses diverge, and this implies no less 
science, nothing inferior, in the required education 
for women. Men and women were intended to 
play different roles in the world, and neither can 
be too well fitted for the work. The home requires 




MAIN ENTRANXE TO NEWCOMB COLLEGE. 




NEWCOMB COLLEGE CHAPEL 



Kewcomb and Other Colleges of the South 229 

science as does the world outside of it. I have great 
hopes of Newcomb. It is wonderful what gifts are 
hidden in the Southern girl. As the finest product 
of plantation days would grace the social world any- 
where, her daughter promises even more, and is able 
to take her place among the women of culture in 
whatever section." 

It is the aim of this educator nicely to combine 
the theoretical and the practical, and so to fit his 
girls for usefulness either in the home or in the 
industrial world. He proposes to unite in Newcomb 
the culture of Vassar and the practicality of Pratt 
Institute. Not only is his college possessed of the 
usual academic facilities, but it has, as well, in its 
curriculum studies intended to prepare the student 
for a workaday world. Chief among these latter 
are the departments of pottery and of church em- 
broidery. The former has made Newcomb famous 
in the markets of Europe as well as of America. 
The latter, though of more recent origin, is favour- 
ably regarded wherever known. 

Newcomb's pottery department is a natural out- 
growth of the college's efforts to educate teachers 
of the fine arts, and to become a centre of aesthetic 
culture. When it was discovered that the work as 
formerly conducted lacked practicality, it was de- 
termined that a school in an industrial direction was 



230 



The College Girl of America 



■what the South needed, in order that the prosperity 
of the locahty should be increased, and the critical 
power of the public developed. In 1896, accord- 
ingly, a pottery was established as a dependency of 
the Sophie Newcomb College, and an effort made 
to create an artistic industry which should so util- 
ize native raw material and develop native talent, 
as effectively to symbolize the place of its activity, 
and enlist the attention of the outside world. Thus 
there grew up and was reflected in the Newcomb 
products what has been called a " sectional patriot- 
ism." None but Southern clays are used in the 
pottery, and the rich and varied flora of the South 
has supplied, almost exclusively, the designs for the 
work. Two years ago there was provided by the 
directors of Newcomb College a pottery building 
which is likewise " sectionally patriotic." An excel- 
lent representative of the Spanish-Colonial type of 
architecture peculiar to New Orleans, yet a structure 
which is none the less perfectly fitted to the needs 
of the present, the home of this chaste and simple 
Pottery School of Newcomb may be held one of the 
choicest possessions of Tulane University. Before 
leaving the very alluring subject of this pottery, 
it should be said that every piece here turned out 
is original, and never duplicated; that It bears the 




THE POTTERY DEPARTMENT, NEWCOMB COLLEGE. 




A PAINTING CLASS, NEWCOMB COLLEGE. 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 231 

monograms of the college, the designer, and the 
potter. 

In the needlework products, also, high ideals and 
devotion to home materials prevail, native cotton 
being generally used, and the work done on cloth 
woven by the students themselves, and dyed in such 
simple colourings as native vegetable matter affords. 

It should not be supposed, however, that the in- 
dustrial departments overbalance the academic ones. 
In courses as well as in buildings, the equipment is 
adequate. There is able instruction along all liberal 
art lines ; there are chemical, physical, and biological 
laboratories, a good library, a lecture-hall capable 
of seating seven hundred persons, a gymnasium, 
and a college chapel, this last a beautiful memorial 
to the remarkable young girl whose death furnished 
the college bequest to the women of the South. 

Although young in years, the campus group has 
taken on a grace which speaks well for its place in 
the hearts of Southern women. Already, a million 
dollars has been expended by Mrs. Newcomb (now 
deceased) in buildings, grounds, and endowments. 
Five residences for boarding students are provided 
in the immediate vicinity of the college, perhaps 
the most Imposing being the Josephine Louise 
House, where every provision has been made for 
the comfort and care of occupants. Visitors are 



232 The College Girl of America 

always immensely impressed by the elegance of this 
magnificent old mansion-house, which seems, in very 
truth, a proper product of the most glorious era 
in New Orleans's history. Nor is Newcomb pro- 
hibitive in its expense. A girl may live in the col- 
lege and pay all her tuition fees for only a little 
more than three hundred and twenty-five dollars a 
year. 

Tulane is, however, not the only university of the 
South which has made generous provision for 
women. The manner of doing this dififers, of 
course, in different colleges, and women avail them- 
selves differently of their privileges. The Univer- 
sity of Nashville, in Tennessee, has two hundred 
and ninety-four women students in its collegiate 
department, and the University of Texas, two hun- 
dred and forty-eight. Stetson University, in Flor- 
ida, on the other hand, has only twenty-seven 
students. 

A very large and immensely successful women's 
division is in the University of the State of Missouri. 

Here every provision for the comfort, as well as 
for the education, of wo "nen has been made. Not 
only are all departments of learning open to women 
students, but they have their own admirably pro- 
tected student life besides. It is here recognized that 
the home in which a girl shall live, while at a co- 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 233 

educational college, is of immense importance. 
When, therefore. Read Hall was erected for the 
accommodation of the women students at Missouri, 
the greatest pains were taken to have it the 
best possible building of the kind. People who have 
seen most of the university and college houses be- 
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific unite in consider- 
ing this hall one of the finest and best equipped in 
the whole country. The furnishings are of the best 
natural wood. Oriental rugs, hardwood floors, and 
artistic burlap contributing to the beauty of the 
house. Read Hall is the first dormitory here, and 
it is expected that it will be the nucleus of a large 
hall and cottage system. It is truly a social centre 
for the women of the university, and, presided over 
as it is by a woman graduated both from Wellesley 
and from Chicago University, the life is at a high 
standard of excellence. The cost of living in this 
house is five dollars a week. 

Provision is also made for the comfort of day- 
students, as well as for that of girls boarding at the 
University of Missouri. In the main building is a 
very large room, beautifully furnished in shades of 
rose, with Morris, rattan, and rocking-chairs, and 
many couches, where the girls may rest or study if 
they like. Here all day long is to be found a delight- 
fully refined and cultivated gentlewoman of the old 



234 The College Girl of America 

Southern school, ready to be of any service what- 
ever to students. 

A distinctly unique feature of the women's life 
at this university is the required golf. When the 
present gymnasium director began her work with 
the girls, her first decision was that, inasmuch as out- 
door exercise is possible in this section for a longer 
period than farther north, outdoor work should 
receive greater attention than had ever been given 
it. She argued, too, that if university funds may 
legitimately be used to supply indoor apparatus 
(available less than half the year), the same funds 
might properly be employed for such outfits as are 
necessary to golf and tennis. This argument seemed 
plausible enough to the authorities, and money was 
speedily forthcoming for the purchase of several 
sets of golf-clubs and for tennis-rackets. Thereupon 
the enterprising gymnasium director added golf to 
the list of required gymnastics. 

The golf links are used for the May Festival of 
the women students, as well as for outside " gym " 
work. This festival is something in the nature of 
a picnic in its informality, its programme of vaude- 
ville. May-pole dancing, and so on, being greatly 
enjoyed by the participating girls. The life of 
women students at this university seems, indeed, to 
be particularly sane and wholesome. 




A BASKET-BALL CONTEST, HOLLINS INSTITUTE. 




A COASTING PARTY, HOLLINS INSTITUTE. 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 235 

Besides Read Hall, there are two homes for mem- 
bers of fraternities, each of which is in the care 
of a house chaperon who looks well to the comfort 
of the ten girls under her charge, and, in Mt. Hol- 
yoke House, girl students find a home similar to 
that of Read Hall, at a somewhat cheaper rate. 
For here, the dining-room being managed after 
the manner of a club, the total expense of living 
is only about three dollars and fifty cents a week. 
It is certainly fine to realize that a Missouri girl 
can get her college training (tuition being free) for 
one hundred and fifty dollars a year. 

One worthy type of college which has produced 
some of the very best of modern Southern women 
exists in the South, however, quite outside univer- 
sity protection. A particularly reputable represent- 
ative of this type is Hollins Institute, Hollins, Vir- 
ginia. Founded in 1842, the Institute has now been 
able to acquire noble traditions, as well as a very 
adequate background. It owns five hundred acres, 
seven miles from the city of Roanoke, and has six 
large brick buildings, so located as to be quite ex- 
cluded from the annoyances of close proximity to 
public thoroughfares. Every Southern State is here 
represented. And so successful is the institution, 
that during recent years it has had to decline many 
pupils. Its attitude is most engagingly naive. 



236 The College Girl of America 

" Young ladies who enter this institute," the cata- 
logue explains, '^ are treated with the respect and 
attention which their sex ever receive at the hands 
of good society in Virginia." And in truth it ap- 
pears to be a very " happifying " and healthy life 
which girls lead here. For the whole term — ex- 
cept perhaps six weeks, and then there is good 
coasting and skating — the students enjoy outdoor 
recreation ! 

Another justly famous Southern school is the 
Mary Baldwin Seminary at Staunton, Virginia. 
Here the aim is to give the school all that purity 
and refinement that characterize a model Virginia 
home, the very atmosphere of which is an incentive 
to higher things, and an inspiration to lofty ideals. 
With this in view, the seminary has a great many 
buildings, so that the number of girls under any 
one roof is small. The houses are dotted about 
over a broad hillside which is one of the most beau- 
tiful spots in the famed Shenandoah Valley, and are 
of aesthetic beauty, as well as of notable comfort. 
The school was established in 1842, as the Augusta 
Female Seminary, but in the time of the Civil War 
it fell into the hands of Agnes McClung and Mary 
Baldwin, two consecrated women, who, regardless 
of the terrible conditions all about, devoted their 
lives to the sustaining and upbuilding of this work. 




PARLOUR AT MARY BALDWIN SEMINARY 




GOLF LINKS AT MARY BALDWIN SEMINARY 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 237 

Fittingly, indeed, are the birthdays of these two 
noble teachers of a past generation observed as 
holidays by the school. 

Lucy Cobb Institute, at Athens, Georgia, is an- 
other good school which has successfully survived 
the disturbances of the war and the unsettled con- 
ditions which followed. Presided over at present 
by a charming Southern woman, it is now in the 
height of its usefulness. The faculty at this school 
is composed entirely of ladies, although a number 
of distinguished men are among the regular lec- 
turers. A particular point is made here of the 
study of Shakespeare and of the English Bible, as 
well as of literature in its broadest and best sense. 

Another Georgia institution of merit is Shorter 
College in Rome, founded in 1877 by the Southern 
philanthropist, Alfred Shorter. This college aimed 
at its outset to make it possible for Southern girls 
to secure in their own part of the country educa- 
tional advantages equal to those enjoyed by their 
Northern sisters, and to that end Colonel Shorter, 
after the erection of magnificent buildings, gave the 
new institution a large endowment. Thus students 
may be educated here at much less expense than 
would be possible in any college supported merely 
by its tuition fees. The courses are more distinctly 
academic, too, than in many of the Southern col- 



238 The College Girl of America 

leges for women; of so high a rank, indeed, that 
Yale has formally agreed to accept Shorter gradu- 
ates into its university departments without prelimi- 
nary examinations, thus placing them on the same 
footing with those who have taken degrees in liberal 
Northern institutions. 

Still another Georgia institute worthy of atten- 
tion and respect is the Agnes Scott School, first 
opened in September, 1889, " for the higher edu- 
cation of young Southern women." The main build- 
ing, together with its furnishing and equipment and 
the lot upon which it stands, were the gift of Col. 
George W. Scott, and the school has been named in 
honour of his mother. This institution is distinctly 
and positively Christian, the Bible being used as 
a text-book. Christian ideals are dominant, and the 
formation and development of character, a prime 
end. Evidence of Agnes Scott's promptness to 
meet needs as they arise may be found in the fact 
that a very fine gymnasium building, equipped with 
a swimming-pool and all modern appliances, has 
just been erected. 

At the Southern Female College, College Park, 
Georgia, near Atlanta, five different kinds of degree 
are conferred, considerable emphasis being also 
placed upon music. The home life at this college 
is given painstaking attention; etiquette and man- 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 239 

ners are discussed, and aesthetic environment pro- 
vided, " while habits of life, companionships, ac- 
complishments, study-hours, reading, and religious 
interests, are stressed most of all." It is rather curi- 
ous to read in the catalogue of this degree-bestow- 
ing institution, that silks are not allowed, and that 
boarders are not permitted to leave the grounds, 
except in the company of teachers. 

Farther North, in Richmond, Virginia, is the 
Woman's College, distinctly Southern and decidedly 
interesting. The main building here was used as 
a hospital during the war, '' and has always seemed 
to me," comments one graduate of the school, 
" haunted by memories of cots and surgeon's 
knives." With a history covering fifty useful years, 
with good buildings, and with six departments, this 
Virginian institution may well hope to do much 
good work in the future for the education of South- 
em girls. The paternal spirit here regnant may be 
gathered from the fact that in the catalogue it is 
especially stipulated that " each pupil must have an 
umbrella, overshoes, and waterproof." 

Concerning other colleges and institutes and 
seminaries of the South, one could easily write vol- 
umes, for their name is legion. They are doing a 
great deal, too, for the education of Southern girls. 
I would by no means be understood as denying this. 



240 The College Girl of America 

But most of them are, of course, very far indeed 
from being colleges in the Northern acceptation of 
the term, — whether they do or do not offer degrees. 
Truth to tell, the degree part of these institutions is 
frequently almost lost in their utility ends. The 
Arkadelphia Methodist College, at Arkadelphia, 
Arkansas, for instance, gave the degree of Bachelor 
of Arts in 1903 to one young man, the degree of 
Bachelor of Science to three girls, that of Bachelor 
of Philosophy to five girls, — and graduated thirty- 
three young men and young women in courses of 
dressmaking, elocution, piano music, shorthand and 
typewriting, banking, and bookkeeping. This " col- 
lege " is distinctly interesting, however, in that it is 
the only one, so far as I can find, which has intro- 
duced instruction in artistic photography. Inasmuch 
as there is considerable opportunity for both men and 
women now to earn large sums of money by means 
of this useful craft, Arkadelphia is certainly to be 
congratulated upon its enterprise in providing such 
a department. 

But skill in photography is not what we of the 
North expect to find in our Southern college sisters. 
Neither do we regard with a very great degree of 
veneration a " college " instructor whose claim to 
fitness for his position rests upon the fact that he 
is a graduate of a Northern commercial school. 



Newcomb and Other Colleges of the South 241 

The Southern institutions which call themselves 
seminaries and train for refined young ladyhood, 
are entitled to respect because they are doing ex- 
actly what they were born to do. But it would 
seem wise and honest — would it not ? — for an 
institution which is a trade-school in fact, to be a 
trade-school in name also. 



COEDUCATIONAL COLLEGES OF THE 

WEST 

The more one studies coeducation, the more one 
is inclined to apply to it Sir Roger de Coverley's 
astute remark, " There is here much to be said on 
both sides.' ^ Even so clear-headed and careful a 
speaker as President M. Carey Thomas of Bryn 
Mawr nods first this way and then that, it would 
appear, when this puzzling topic is under discussion. 
On one occasion she is quoted as saying, " I heartily 
approve of coeducation." But on another, — 
Smith's quarter-centennial in 1900, — she remarked, 
" I am myself a graduate of Cornell, and I suspect 
that I missed a great deal of the air of the world's 
spirit natural to youth that I should have found 
in women's colleges. I know that I missed much 
of the delight of college life known to girls in the 
women's colleges of to-day. ... If only the 
academic standard of women's colleges can be kept 
equal to that of the best colleges for men, the pref- 
erence for women's colleges seems to me, on the 

whole, a wise one." Yet farther on in the same 

242 




A COEDUCATED GIRL OF THE 

WEST. 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 243 

paper Miss Thomas characterizes the then just 
proposed scheme to exclude women and organize 
them into a separate college, — which has now been 
carried out at the University of Chicago, — as "a 
distinctly backward step for woman's education." 

Other able writers have waxed no less wroth over 
Chicago's " deadly blow at coeducation," claiming 
that, when, in 1890, the two great modern univer- 
sities of Chicago and Stanford were founded with 
every privilege freely accorded to women, they first 
came into their own. As a matter of fact there are, 
of course, decided advantages as well as grave dis- 
advantages in coeducation. President Thwing has 
put these neatly in , a single paragraph : " Coedu- 
cation," he says, " has the advantage of economy 
and also of directness of preparation for certain 
women; coeducation helps the woman who is to 
be obliged to earn her own living to become vigor- 
ous and aggressive. Coeducation, on the other hand, 
has in my opinion, though not in the opinion of 
everybody, the cfwadvantage of lessening man's 
instinctive respect for womanhood. It has also the 
disadvantage of making some women mannish." 

It is almost universally conceded that coeducation 
has worked much better in the West than in the 
East. Some people who have had wide opportu- 
nities to observe the system in both parts of this 



244 The College Girl of America 

country, even go so far as to say that while it is 
admirable in the West it is execrable in the East. 
A woman who has been dean of an important co- 
educational college in the West, and is now dean 
of another coeducational college in the East, says, 
feelingly : "I am a strong believer in coeducation, 
but not in coeducation as it exists in the East. I 
believe in coeducation after trying it for twenty 
years. I recall some noble men and women it has 
produced. I recall some true homes it has estab- 
lished, with equal respect and equal rights and privi- 
leges between husband and wife. I like to think 
of the sanity, the breadth that is possible to coedu- 
cational institutions. It may have — it does have 
— disillusions, but they are wholesome. Men and 
women come to know one another well when thrown 
together day by day; genuine manhood and true 
womanhood rise in value through such intercourse. 
The young women refine and keep pure the young 
men, the young men make more sensible and 
thoughtful the young women; and the action and 
reaction are alike good. But it requires more care, 
more supervision, more personal work, to develop 
men and women together. It is easier to educate 
each sex apart. 

" So far as I know," she continues, " the East 
has never tested the value of coeducation in a large 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 24^ 

and generous fashion, — and there is no other way 
to find out its value. Having never truly tested 
coeducation, it does not believe in it. It is not pre- 
pared to know its value. Where it exists in the 
East, it hedges the women about, and is itself hedged 
about, by traditions. But in the free West it has 
quite a different history, and no one has thought 
of questioning its value or weighing its results, for 
they have been so satisfactory as to awaken no ques- 
tion." 

This last statement is, of course, not quite true, 
as I shall endeavour to show a bit further on in 
the chapter. Just now, however, let us consider that 
very grave weakness of coeducation upon which, 
albeit unconsciously, the lady just quoted put her 
finger at once when she said : " It requires more 
care, more supervision, to educate men and women 
together." Now it is just this care and this 
supervision which is almost entirely lacking in 
many of the large Western universities. And 
as a result, we find that such despatches as this — 
founded on truth, too — are constantly getting into 
our papers. " Morningside College, a Methodist in- 
stitution in Sioux City, is divided in factions over 
a question of the rights of woman. The point at 
issue is whether a * co-ed * who can sprint faster 
than any man in the school has the right to a place 



246 The College Girl of America 

on its track team at the State intercollegiate field 
meet. Morningside possesses a sprinting young 
woman, who at the field trials covered a fifty-yard 
dash in 0.05^, a world's record for a woman. The 
best time made by a man was 0.06. The ' co-eds,' 
therefore, demand to know why their representative 
should not go to the State meet, where they are 
certain she would beat any of the men of the State 
colleges in the fifty and one hundred-yard dashes." 
Over against such an instance as this of develop- 
ment in an unwomanly direction is, however, to be 
placed the recent compliment paid to Chicago Uni- 
versity " co-eds " by Doctor Delbrueck, the famous 
German philologist, who, with four other German 
educators from leading German universities, had 
been closely studying the life of women in Chicago. 
Doctor Delbrueck, looking on at the spectacle of 
1,360 women students there, remarked with un- 
questionable sincerity, " I have found these Amer- 
ican women wonderfully brilliant and as wonder- 
fully beautiful." Possibly it is in this very brilliancy 
and beauty that the explanation of Doctor Harper's 
much-condemned " segregation " lies. At Chicago, 
as at very many other coeducational institutions, the 
women have latterly begun tO' outnumber and out- 
shine the men. The last report gives more than 
thirteen hundred women in the collegiate depart- 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 247 

ment here, against only nine hundred men. In the 
University of CaHfornia, on the other hand, latest 
reports show that just as the number of men en- 
tering the technical colleges has increased, the 
number of women entering the arts department has 
decreased. It is the acknowledged ideal of coedu- 
cation to keep the sexes balanced, but it seems well- 
nigh impossible of attainment. 

To be sure, there are still enough girls at Berke- 
ley, — more than eleven hundred, — and the prob- 
lem of taking care of them properly appears a suf- 
ficiently appalling one. President Wheeler in his 
last report says frankly that the need of carefully 
organized and wisely conducted students' homes 
for the girls here is a very grave one. " The prob- 
lem of where and how the women students shall 
live, is one of much difficulty. There are to-day 
more women students in the University of Cali- 
fornia than in any other institution in the country 
which provides for the higher education of women, 
with the single exception of Smith. At the begin- 
ning of each year, three hundred or more young 
women arrive in Berkeley for the first time, usually 
alone, and unaccustomed to travel. The Y. W. C. 
A. has performed an invaluable work in meeting 
students and aiding newcomers to find proper homes 
through its salaried secretary [whose entire time 



248 The College Girl of America 

is devoted to the society's work]. And Mrs. Hearst 
has carried through a most interesting experiment 
bearing upon the problem of college homes for 
women students. [She has equipped two club- 
houses, in each of which dwell fifteen or twenty 
girls, and a house mother, which have been ex- 
tremely successful, as have likewise the eight soror- 
ity houses.] But we need a revolving fund which 
should provide for the original furnishing of such 
women's clubs as might be formed from time to 
time. Only this can save the large body of girls 
from the forlorn lonesomeness of a third-rate hoard- 
ing-house.*^ 

How forlorn is the life of many of the women 
students at the University of California may be 
gathered from the experience of some girls who 
are working their way through. One of these, 
printed in the last biennial report, gives an ac- 
count of a third-year's income. Between the lines 
may be read the unrelieved pinch of a sordid strug- 
gle with life. ** Hearst domestic industries, ninety- 
six dollars ; teaching and other work, forty dollars ; 
from home, twenty dollars. This last year my three 
younger sisters and myself have kept house. Out 
a way from town we found two large unfurnished 
rooms and a garret, which we have rented at four 
dollars a month. We have lived very cheaply, but 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 249 

I do not recommend housekeeping unless one takes 
at least one meal a day out. I have sewed sixteen 
hours a week, at twenty cents an hour, at the Hearst 
Domestic Industries." 

Mrs. Phebe Hearst is the only fairy godmother 
of the girls at the University of California. She has 
done much for them, but much still remains to do. 
A hall named in her honour has come to be the centre 
of the social life of women students. Here the 
girls lunch together; here hold meetings, concerts, 
receptions, and other college affairs. Here, too, 
is a superb gymnasium, an enclosed basket-ball 
court, and space for outside basket-ball games, for 
archery, and for open-air work in physical culture. 
Thus it will be seen that the hall meets a very real 
need. But it by no means does all, we repeat, that 
should be done for the comfort and well-being of 
this vast body of women students. 

At the University of Minnesota, which has more 
than six hundred and fifty girl students, there is a 
very pleasant girl's dormitory. Situated, as the col- 
lege is, in a large city, the life is naturally not so 
marked as in towns where a college is practically the 
whole thing, but there are a large number of sorori- 
ties at the university, and these are greatly enjoyed 
by their members. Yet, since less than one-half of 
the girls belong to sororities, a picture of sorority 



250 The College Girl of America 

life would not represent truly the life of the college 
girl. Possibly the major part of the social life of 
the young women here is associated with the social 
life of the city, rather than with that of the college 
itself. The young women at Minnesota now sus- 
tain their college work about as young men do. 
When the scholarship system of honour was in 
vogue, they captured the first place rather more 
than half the time. 

A girl often makes great sacrifices to stay on at 
Minnesota. The expense is almost nothing (five dol- 
lars is the university fee), but inasmuch as many of 
the women who come here to study are entirely, 
or almost entirely, dependent on their own exer- 
tions for means of living, their struggles for the 
sake of an education are often little short of heroic. 
From a student's note-book, which I have been privi- 
leged to see, I learn of one Minnesota girl who 
entered college with fifty cents, put herself through 
the first year, paying all her bills with scarcely nine 
dollars from home, and ended with one dollar and 
ten cents on hand. 

** Fifty cents is the sum total of my wealth," 
she writes the first of September, " and I must rely 
upon selling a beautiful five-dollar book for my 
entrance fee. Yesterday I went out with it, but 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 251 

met nO' success, although every one was kind and 
sympathetic. September 4th. The whole week has 
been one of hoping, despairing, praying. I have 
not sold my book, and so could not register. At 
last, in despair, I went tO' the noblest-hearted pro- 
fessor of the university, and told her my pitiful 
tale. Her great woman heart opened wide and 
took me in. She didn't eye me suspiciously, won- 
dering if I were an impostor; she didn't drop the 
matter with mere regrets because she herself was 
unable to buy the book. No, indeed! She took 
the book and sold it for me! I shall never forget 
the unselfish light which illuminated her counte- 
nance, and the hearty handshake as she triumphantly 
exclaimed, ' The book is sold. You may register.' " 
The particular means this girl adopted, besides 
canvassing, was housework. She writes that it 
was her custom to read Browning while wash- 
ing dishes, and to brace herself, when turned coldly 
away in the course of her peddling, by repeating: 

*' Then welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 

Each sting which bids nor sit, nor stand, but go ! 

Be thy joy three parts pain, 

Strive and hold cheap the strain, 

Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe." 



252 



The College Girl of America 



The financial report of this particular student 
is so interesting that it is given here: 



RECEIPTS 



On hand Sept. i . . . 
Canvassing .... 
Journal Xmas tree . 
Child tending .... 


I 


$ 50 
00 
88 
90 


Sundries 


37 


Extra nurse work . 


. I 50 


Total earned . 


12 65 


From papa 

Loan .... 




8 25 
2 45 




$23 85 


DISBURSEMENTS 




University fee . , . . 
Books 




$ 5 00 
2 86 


Clothing 

Carfare 




5 61 
60 


Postage 

Board and room . . . . 




I 37 
3 28 


Contributions and gifts . 
Sundries 




2 00 
2 03 






$22 75 


Cash on hand .... 


• 


I 10 



$23 85 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 253 

Generally speaking, housework is held to be the 
best way for a girl to work her passage through 
college. One wonders how this Minnesota maiden 
was able to stand the strain of it all, but inasmuch 
as she gained ten pounds in the course of the year, 
we may conclude that she did not really work too 
hard. Of the experience she herself records at the 
year's end : " My most valuable lessons have not 
been learned from books. I have battled with the 
great living world, and will henceforth meet it with 
bolder courage. I have been learning to endure 
drudgery as an essential part of success in every 
vocation. I am learning to vanquish opposition 
from without ; fears, sensitiveness, a myriad of evils 
from within. I am learning to know myself, my 
frailties, but my possibilities, also. This year, there- 
fore, shall always be catalogued as one of great 
blessing." With women of such spirit as this to 
renew the land, America is certainly still a long 
way from becoming " effete." 

At the University of Michigan the question of 
controlling the social life of the women seems to 
be fairly well settled, thanks to the new women's 
building (or Barbour Gymnasium, as it is inter- 
changeably called) and the close and sympathetic 
attention of the women's dean to the needs of her 
girls. This university's present ideal for women 



254 The College Girl of America 

students has been evolved from three decades of 
coeducation. When Michigan's doors were first 
opened to women, all who came were there for 
study, for work. But with the growing popularity 
of education for women, and with the prosperity 
of the middle West, the " boarding-school type " 
of girl has come on the scene. This girl needs to 
be made to study, and needs, too, a considerable 
number of rules laid down for the guidance O'f her 
student life. Because of the presence of this new 
type, the women's building, where the present dean 
has her official headquarters, is of particular value. 
All social affairs are held in this building, and the 
hours of its use are controlled. A limit of twelve 
o'clock is fixed for the close of all entertainments, 
and the women's dean is always present at whatever 
festivities college girls give. 

Thus the social life of Michigan University has 
latterly attained a distinctly higher tone than it 
has sometimes had in the past. The tuition fee at 
Michigan, by the bye, is thirty dollars for girls 
resident in the State, and forty dollars for all others. 
There are no dormitories and no commons con- 
nected with the university. 

The University of Nebraska is another very im- 
portant institution of the West. Its women stu- 
dents alone number six hundred. Here, too, there 




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. Coeducational Colleges of the West 255 

are no houses of residence, all that is done to make 
life gracious and easy for the girls being accom- 
plished through the Young Women's Christian 
Association, which has, in the basement of Uni- 
versity Hall, a pleasant room, always open to mem- 
bers and their friends. A woman's parlour and 
rest-room for girl students of the college and a 
room " where ladies may lunch " seems to complete 
the provision here made for girl students as such. 
Nebraska girls have, however, their own gymnastic 
director, their own social clubs, and their own ath- 
letic interests. And if one may judge from the ap- 
pearance of a representative basket-ball team, the 
university produces a very vigorous type of girl. 

At Leland Stanford Junior University, in Palo 
Alto, California, the social need inherent in coedu- 
cation has been very frankly recognized, if one may 
judge from an admirable editorial contributed to the 
woman's edition of the Daily Palo Alto by a college 
girl : " Rightly or wrongly," this young woman de- 
clares, " the world demands of the college woman 
a criterion of action. She must be able to set it. 
Just as the world exacts of the college man that he 
shall a little more than hold his own in business 
circles, so it looks to the college woman for leader- 
ship and savoir-faire in all circles. How and when 
she acquire the ability to lead and do is left to her, 



256 The College Girl of America 

but have it she must. Since it is a thing that can be 
mastered only by practice, opportunity to so attain 
it should be afforded her. Since it is demanded 
of her because she is a college woman, that train- 
ing should be given her by her college. The Stan- 
ford girl must have social training. Book-lore alone 
does not answer. Surely the need must be imper- 
ative when an ' upper class woman ' cries out in 
abnegation of spirit : 'If only there were offered 
at Stanford a course in genuine good breeding ! ' 
What that girl longed for was not more receptions, 
— which too often are a mockery of true social 
intercourse, and a shallow form we hold to from 
sheer lack of courage to let go ; not more balls, — 
most of which we attend merely to demonstrate 
publicly that we have been invited; not even more 

* spreads,' — which are apt tO' degenerate into mere 

* feeds.' What she wanted was real social expe- 
rience to prepare her to go into the world a woman 
educated in the fullest sense of the word." 

With the promptness to meet needs that is char- 
acteristic of Leland Stanford, a Woman's League 
has recently been organized, under the leadership 
of Mrs. Jordan, and is now doing a great deal to 
bring the women of the university into closer social 
contact. Of other organizations there are a large 
number at Stanford, so that no girl who wishes 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 257 

to develop in one or another direction need lack for 
opportunity. A vigorous branch of the Christian 
Association, several sororities, with houses of their 
own, Roble, a beautiful residence house, and diverse 
boarding-clubs, all contribute to the life which makes 
Stanford what it is. Almost five hundred girls are 
now sharing that life, and living up with what 
distinction they can command to the spirit Mrs. 
Stanford invoked when she said : '' I would have 
each one of my girls remember that she exerts an 
influence extending far beyond her conception, and 
I pray that it will be for good always ; and I would 
have her realize she can use it for the good of her 
university in a constant endeavour to uphold the 
Stanford standard of honesty, sincerity, and truth 
in all things. This is her duty, and I would have 
her meet it seriously and willingly. I would have 
the Stanford girl womanly in the highest, sweetest 
sense of the word. I would have her enjoy to the 
fullest her equal privileges here with gentle dignity, 
respecting herself, and making all with whom she 
comes in contact respect her. Finally, above all 
else, I would have her go out into the world a noble 
Christian woman who will stand for something seri- 
ous in life, and always be a credit to Stanford." 

Few Western universities are more beautiful 
than that in Madison, Wisconsin, the privileges of 



258 The College Girl of America 

which are entirely free to girls of the State. The 
grounds comprise three hundred acres, and extend 
for more than a mile along the south shore of 
Lake Mendota, a large and imposing sheet of water, 
from the eastern part of which the land rises 
abruptly into two summits. On the slope of one 
of these is the college plant. The single dormitory 
for young women at this university is Chadbourne 
Hall, built in 1870, and remodelled and enlarged 
in 1896, but the life of girl students is broad 
and many-sided, inasmuch as two literary societies, 
— Castalia, established near the beginning of the 
university, and Pythia, formed this last year, — 
as well as several small clubs, are maintained. The 
women have organized, too, a self-government 
association, and a prosperous branch of the Young 
Women's Christian Association. Gymnastic exer- 
cises are required at Wisconsin during the first two 
years of the course. The " gym " (in one part of 
Chadbourne Hall) has connected with it tennis and 
cycling clubs, and there is practice in such games 
as basket-ball, newcombe, and basquette. The resi- 
dence hall accommodates ninety students, and is 
furnished with everything necessary to comfort. 
The girls occupying the building are under the 
immediate charge of the mistress of the hall, and 
are required to board there. The cost of the table 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 259 

accommodation is three dollars and seventy-five 
cents a week, the price of rooms varying from forty 
to ninety-five dollars a year, according tO' location. 
Reasonable as these charges seem, they are, of 
course, tremendous to girls who have no money 
at all. And at Wisconsin such girls are not rare; 
we hear again and again of tremendous self-sacri- 
fice for the sake of an education. Two girls of 
whom I know were able to live on one dollar a 
week here, paying fifty cents each for their room 
and fifty cents each for their food. The latter con- 
sisted of corn-meal and oatmeal, eggs, — when these 
were cheap, — and stale bread, with a half a pint 
of milk daily. One of the girls has said, with a 
keen appreciation of the humourous side of the 
matter, that semioccasionally they would purchase 
a cheap piece of steak, cut it in exactly two parts 
(of which half would be laid away until the next 
day), and dine sumptuously upon the remaining 
half equally divided. To earn the dollar a week 
of their college expense these girls taught school 
in Dakota during the summer. And inasmuch as 
they had intellectual ability, as well as grit, their 
sacrifices have paid; they are now teachers of 
Latin, drawing good salaries. Such self-denial is 
a tragedy, of course, only in the cases — and they 
are not so rare as they ought to be — of girls who, 



26o The College Girl of America 

after all this anguish in getting an education, are 
unable to *' improve " what they have acquired. 

At Indiana University the incoming girl student 
presents her credentials at once to a dean of women 
who makes her feel at home and helps her to find 
herself. Most of the students here lodge in private 
houses and board in clubs. The cost naturally 
varies greatly with the way of living. But in the 
present student body close economy is the rule. 
Yet, in spite of the free tuition, the average expense 
is apt to be about two hundred dollars a year. 
There is a good deal of social life at Indiana, in 
which both men and women have a share, as well 
as many interests peculiar to the girls alone. Ama- 
teur theatricals have always been encouraged at 
this university, both by the student body and faculty, 
and for the past seven years an annual play has 
been presented on Foundation Day, in which any 
student possessing dramatic ability might take part. 
Formerly these plays, under the efficient direction 
of Prof. Martin Wright Sampson, were Shake- 
spearian, and were given without scenery — de- 
pending upon the interpretation to please the 
audiences. Out of this annual performance has 
now grown the Strut and Fret Club, which presents 
three public and six private plays each college year, 
and has ten women and fifteen men on its 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 261 

membership list. In basket-ball the girls of In- 
diana find an outlet for their athletic enthusiasm, 
and the sororities and social clubs present oppor- 
tunity for pleasant friendly intercourse. The 
women's gymnasium, Mitchell Hall, has all equip- 
ment necessary to exercise, as well as two well- 
shaded tennis-courts for the use of girls. On the 
first floor of Kirkwood Hall, a noble building of 
white limestone, the Christian Association provides 
a waiting-room for the especial accommodation of 
women students. Thus, though Indiana lacks the 
dormitories, which it is undoubtedly well for a 
coeducational university to provide for its girls, 
there seems tO' be fairly adequate provision for the 
comfort and gracious social life of women students. 
Yet, after all, it is the personality of the dean 
even more than the attitude of the university 
toward women which determines whether a girl 
shall or shall not find in a given college what she 
needs to make her undergraduate life sweet and 
noble. The University of Illinois is superlatively 
attractive in both these directions. The dean, Miss 
Violet Jayne, is in close touch with her girls, all 
of whom like her greatly, and women are very 
welcome on the campus. Apart from the frater- 
nities, clubs, and societies, which often foster cliques 
while they encourage friendship, this university has 



262 The College Girl of America 

an important organization called the Watcheka 
League, which especially seeks to afford opportu- 
nities for all the girls to become acquainted. To 
this every woman student is eligible. The league 
gives six or eight parties during the year, in one 
or another of the university buildings; the modes 
of entertainment are various, including chafing-dish 
parties, costume-parties, dancing-parties, picnics, 
and once a year — when the girls may invite their 
men friends — a play. The Young Women's 
Christian Association, too, gives a large number of 
social affairs in the Association House just opposite 
the campus, the entertainment here consisting gen- 
erally of games and music, especially college sing- 
ing. Then the girls who are taking gymnasium 
work (largely freshmen and sophomores) are per- 
mitted to give, under the direction of their in- 
structor, one or two dancing-parties in the gym- 
nasium during the year, each girl being allowed 
to have one man friend invited. University affairs, 
too, — not strictly of a social nature, — contribute 
much to college spirit; for example, the May-pole 
Dance, given every spring by the gymnasium girls 
on the spacious south campus; the singing of col- 
lege songs by scores or hundreds of students to- 
gether out-of-doors, sitting on the grass, when the 
spring days become warm enough; the convoca- 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 263 

tions for which the whole student body is requested 
to assemble to hear something the president has 
to say, or to listen to some distinguished visitor; 
also the baseball and football games, at which the 
girls seek to do their share toward spurring the 
Illinois team on to victory. 

The majority of the girls at Illinois room and 
board in private houses, but about seventy-five of 
them live in the houses of the five sororities. The 
university exercises no direct authority over the 
home life of students, and has only one regulation 
for their social life, i. e., the dancing-parties shall 
not occur save on Friday or Saturday evenings. 
Beginning next year, however, there will probably 
be a much more carefully organized social life. 
For the new woman's building, which will provide 
a spacious general meeting-room and other social 
rooms, a fine gymnasium, with dressing-rooms, 
lockers, baths, and a swimming-pool, will then be 
in use. It is confidently predicted that this will be 
the most charming and useful building ever given 
over exclusively to the use of women " co-eds." In 
this new structure — built after the New England 
Colonial style of architecture — will be supplied 
also ample accommodations for the household 
science department (one of the most important 



264 The College Girl of America 

branches of this university), which is now in the 
fourth very successful year of its history. 

Student hfe at IlHnois is free, democratic, and 
healthful. The aim is to make women out of the 
college girls who come here, women who shall be 
sane and true and tolerant and useful in the home 
and in the State. The university cherishes culture, 
but it knows that any culture worth having must 
come through work. It proclaims, therefore, that 
it particularly wants the favour and the patronage 
of the thrifty. No girl who is earnest and has the 
preparation which the high schools can give ever 
knocks at the door of Illinois University in vain. 
The Young Woman's Christian Association con- 
ducts a free labour bureau which helps students to 
find work for the defraying of part of their ex- 
penses. And since the fees here are but twelve 
dollars a semester, and the average student need 
not spend more than two hundred dollars upon liv- 
ing expenses, many girls are able almost to support 
themselves. 

Under the able presidency of Dr. Howard Ayres, 
the University of Cincinnati has during late years 
attained high intellectual standing in the West. 
And that its young people are very happy in their 
social activities — the girls no less than the men — 
one must conclude from undergraduate life as re- 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 265 

fleeted in the year-books of the university and in 
the college's good times. There are several sorori- 
ties here, a German club and a comedy club, to 
which both girls and men belong, as well as a girls* 
glee-club, and numerous small fellowships. 

That the students of this university are possessed 
of that invaluable thing, a sense of humour, is 
shown in the following skit, ^' How to write an 
English 13 Story," which could have come only 
from the pen of a girl : *' I. Lay the scene if 
possible in the country; the shorter the story the 
more countrified the place. II. Embellish the walls 
of the house, and at the same time your story, with 
ancestral portraits ; frames are a necessity, though 
they may be tarnished. III. The heroine must 
be ugly; try to introduce freckles; remember Jane 
Eyre (N. B. Not written by a member of the 
class). IV. The hero must be a prig; if he has 
any faults they must be perceived by no one but 
the heroine, who is near-sighted and will overlook 
them. V. Children are a luxury; this gives a 
lifelike tone. VI. Notes and full explanations of 
all foreign words and phrases, whether explained 
by the context or not, must be given; place such 
notes in as prominent a position as possible. VII. 
The use of the first person is advisable; this gives 
the necessary idea of conceit. VIII. Try to secure 



266 The College Girl of America 

an autobiographical tone, as in * The Owner of 
the Gas-Mills,' or * Life in High Society, by a 
Member of the Royal Family.' " 

At the University of Iowa, as at Cincinnati, 
special provision is made for the comfort and wel- 
fare of the young women through the offices of 
a woman dean, who recommends boarding and lodg- 
ing places, sees that students who are ill while away 
from home are put under proper care, assists, as 
far as possible, young women who wish to earn 
their way through college, corresponds with parents 
who desire to make inquiries regarding their daugh- 
ters, takes an interest in the women's organizations, 
and is ready to make any suggestions that seem 
to her to be for the good of all. The homes to 
which she sends girls are always those which have 
already been carefully inspected. A small special 
gymnasium for women has been fitted up on the 
ground floor of the Hall of Liberal Arts here, and 
an expert gymnastic instructor is provided espe- 
cially for women students. Iowa, however, has no 
very rich social life for its girls, inasmuch as it 
lacks dormitories and commons. The tuition is 
twenty-five dollars a year, board and lodging in 
private houses being obtainable for from three to 
five dollars a week. To aid those girls who must 
support themselves, the Young Women's Christian 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 267 

Association conducts a free labour bureau, and, in- 
asmuch as Iowa City is a town of eight thousand 
inhabitants, whose citizens are friendly to the uni- 
versity, and take pleasure in affording to deserving 
students the opportunity to earn their necessary 
expenses, it rarely happens that a girl who needs 
help fails to secure steady employment of some 
kind. During the past year, indeed, the demand 
for student help was greater than the supply. 

The officers of Kansas State University never 
miss an opportunity to express their appreciation 
of the vast benefits the presence of women have 
conferred upon their institution. " The far larger 
devotion to the claims of society, the large measure 
of freedom from certain sorts of fun-making, the 
more uncertain hold of athletic sports, are some 
of the more obvious results of the coeducational 
constitution of this university," a recent faculty 
member has recorded. The fraternity has been by 
far the most important unit within this university. 
Kansas's social life cannot, indeed, be considered 
apart from these societies, for it has centred in them. 
The intensity of this social life varies, of course, 
from year to year, and from fraternity to fraternity 
(there are six to which men alone belong, and three 
especially for girls), but as a rule each fraternity 
intends to have two considerable social events 



268 The College Girl of America 

during the year. These have usually taken the 
form of evening parties, with dancing and refresh- 
ments. More rarely have these events been in the 
shape of formal dinners or suppers, with toasts, and 
perhaps some musical or literary figure. The faculty 
does little at Kansas to influence or direct the social 
life of the students, though it is often represented 
at social gatherings. The one affair to which all 
members of the university are welcome, whether 
fraternity people or not, is the university ball. 
This has never yet established itself as the regular 
social event of the year, which it might well become, 
but there is considerable probability that it may 
soon so develop. 

Nature has done much for Northwestern Uni- 
versity. Extending for three-quarters of a mile 
along Lake Michigan, in the beautiful city of Evans- 
ton, two miles north of Chicago's extreme limit, its 
campus is covered for the greater part with a dense 
growth of virgin oak-trees, famous for their 
beauty. The buildings are many and attractive, 
special provision being made for the comfortable 
housing of girl students. The freshman, when she 
enters, is guided at once by a representative of the 
Young Women's Christian Association tO' Willard 
Hall, so named in honour of Evanston's most 
famous citizen, Frances Willard, who was for sev- 



. Coeducational Colleges of the West 269 

eral years dean of the women's college. This build- 
ing forms a pleasant home for young ladies, and 
stands just one block tO' the west of the main 
campus entrance on a spacious lot of its own. Life 
here is under the immediate oversight of a dean 
who lives in the building, and associates with the 
residents as a friend and adviser. 

If the woman student at Northwestern be so 
situated that she needs to economize and work her 
way in part, she will direct her steps to Pearsons 
Hall, a modest but very homelike building, standing 
directly across the street from Willard Hall, where 
seventy young women, by caring for their own 
rooms, doing the dining-room work, and so on, 
reduce the cost of their room and board to a figure 
but little above the price of their provisions in 
bulk. Or the newcomer may be led to Chapin Hall, 
a fine new dormitory for women, erected twO' years 
ago, where conditions are similar to those prevailing 
in Pearsons Hall. All women students not residents 
of Evanston are required to room in one of these 
three halls, unless specifically excused by a faculty 
committee of oversight; and all women students, 
whether rooming in the halls or elsewhere, are 
directly subject to the oversight of women. Very 
sensible limitations have been imposed upon the 
social life here. In the interest of the college 



270 The College Girl of America 

community the faculty has adopted a regulation that 
no organization or group of students shall hold in 
any year more than one party or social entertain- 
ment at which both ladies and gentlemen are present. 
Previous permission must in all cases be obtained 
from the committee on social affairs, and such parties 
shall close not later than eleven o'clock. 

About the lowest sum for which it is possible to 
get through a year at Northwestern University is 
two' hundred and twenty-five dollars. The college 
is distinctly and positively Christian, it is worth 
noting, seventy per cent, of the women and seventy- 
two per cent, of the men in the undergraduate body 
being church-members. The charter provides, how- 
ever (in spite of the fact that Northwestern Uni- 
versity was founded by Methodists), that " no par- 
ticular religious faith shall be required of those 
who- become students." 

Oberlin College has been characterized as the 
" strongest Christian force between the Hudson and 
Lake Michigan." Probably this is no exaggeration. 
Certainly an educational institution bom in the way 
this one was should be a Christian force. The 
story of the founding of this college is full of 
colour and interest. More than seventy years ago 
two young men who had been boys together in a 
Vermont village determined to establish in the West 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 271 

a Christian colony which should be the environment 
of a Christian college. They had no money and 
very little influence, nothing, indeed, except faith 
in the value of their idea. One of them, Philo P. 
Stewart, had been a missionary to the Choctaw 
Indians in Mississippi ; the other, John J. Shipard, 
had for two years been pastor of a new settle- 
ment at Elyria, Ohio. The one thing clear to them 
both was the need of just such an enterprise as 
they were determined to execute. In search of 
a suitable location for their colony and college, the 
two friends rode eight miles southwest from Elyria 
into the primitive forest. There they knelt in 
prayer under an elm-tree which still stands at the 
southeast corner of the college campus. From their 
prayer, and from the sturdy devotion with which 
they reinforced it, grew the college. There had 
recently been published in this country an account 
of the self-sacrificing life of John Frederick Ober- 
lin, a German pastor among the poor French and 
German population of the valley on the borders of 
Alsace and Lorraine. His spirit and achievements 
seemed so like those which were desired for the 
new colony that his name was given to it by the 
founders. 

Soon after choosing his local habitation and his 
name, Mr. Shipard rode on horseback to New 



272 The College Girl of America 

England (taking two weeks for the journey), to 
bargain for the land he wanted and to secure colo- 
nists suitable tO' his purpose. The next spring, on 
April 19, 1833, the first colonist arrived with his 
family, and moved into a log house which he had 
erected near the historic elm. Others followed, and, 
on December 3d of the same year, eleven families 
were on the ground and the school was opened 
with forty-four pupils. The number increased to 
one hundred and one the following summer, and 
four young men were regularly classified as fresh- 
men. The venture grew wonderfully, so much so 
that a year and a half after its opening the college 
was organized in all departments, having thirty- 
five students in the theological seminary, and thirty- 
eight in the college. In recent years the average 
student attendance has been about thirteen hundred, 
of which a fair proportion are women. From 
the very first, indeed, Oberlin has stood for the 
coeducation of the sexes. The original circular sent 
out from here proclaimed this principle, and of the 
forty-four students present at the opening fifteen 
were young women. From the very first, too, 
Oberlin has endeavoured to meet the needs of every 
one — of those who must practise extreme economy, 
as well as of those who can si)end freely. It has 
to-day five boarding-halls, with a wide variety of 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 273 

expense and style of living*. Keep Home provides 
opportunities for self-supporting young women to 
board — doing a good deal of their own service — 
at from forty to sixty cents a week. Stewart Hall 
is designed for those who wish at a moderate price 
good substantial food without the more expensive 
luxuries. Board and room are here supplied to 
a girl for $2.25 a week. Lord Cottage furnishes 
a home for about forty young women at $3.50 
a week, while at Talcott Hall and Baldwin Cottage 
the price varies, according to the location and size 
of the room, from something over four to almost 
six dollars a week, including board, fuel, and light. 
The total charges for tuition and incidentals are 
seventy-five dollars a year at Oberlin. Thus students 
who wish to devote all their time to college work, 
without being hampered by having to earn any 
part of their necessary expenses, need only two 
hundred and twenty-five dollars a year; and few 
girls find it necessary to spend more than three 
hundred dollars a year, even though having all the 
comforts of college life. Traditions and public 
sentiment all favour the self-helping students and 
discourage every sort of extravagance. 

Life in Oberlin, while quiet and simple, abounds 
in healthful student enthusiasms. Whenever the 
girls want anything not easy of immediate attain- 



274 The College Girl of America 

ment, they work for it. Recently they polished 
shoes, darned stockings, sold violets, and painted 
posters to earn money with which to enclose a much- 
needed basket-ball court. The social life is under 
the oversight of a dean, who looks carefully after 
the interests of all girl students. Saturday is regular 
recreation evening, and by limiting the number of 
small and unimportant entertainments, and improv- 
ing the character of several regular gatherings of 
the students, a growing sense for social forms, 
most gratifying to the faculty, has recently been 
developed. The students for all departments meet 
for prayers in the college chapel every day except 
Mondays at eleven-thirty. And, in addition, one 
Thursday each month at four, in the same place, a 
lecture is delivered by some member of the faculty 
or by some invited speaker from abroad. This 
last regular convocation, it is interesting to note, 
is the modern successor of the time-honoured 
" Thursday lecture " in which Oberlin for so long 
bore witness to its New England and English 
Puritan descent. 

Inasmuch as President Thwing of the Western 
Reserve University has come to be regarded in this 
country almost as an authority on college training 
for women, the girls' department of his particular 
charge has, of course, a special claim to our atten- 




INAUGURAL PROCESSION, OBERLIN. 




SEVERANCE LABORATORY, OBERLIN. 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 275 

tion. It is called the Cleveland College for Women, 
and grew out of a permission to let one young 
woman enter certain classes of Adalbert College 
(the liberal arts department of Western Reserve 
University) to pursue certain subjects in which 
she was interested. This resulted in an increasing 
number of girls making application for the full 
course, in a growing opposition of the professors 
to their admission, and in the ardent and deter- 
mined advocacy of President Cutler in favour of 
making Adelbert College coeducational. Finally it 
was made clear that, since the intention of the found- 
ers of Adelbert was to provide education for men 
only, a firm stand must be taken against the in- 
coming of women. The result of it all was that 
courses were duplicated for the benefit of girls. 
And it is in this form rather than in coeducation 
that girls have been admitted to Western Reserve 
University. They receive their degrees with the 
men, to be sure, but the system is that of coordina- 
tion. 

Of other universities in the West which have 
their own good quota of women students there are 
many — Ohio State, with about two hundred girls, 
the University of Colorado with more than one 
hundred and fifty, Colorado College and the Uni- 
versity of Denver with only a few less — to mention 



276 The College Girl of America 

merely a few of the more important not here de- 
scribed. It is, however, sufficiently clear, I think, 
that, while the educational opportunities afforded 
by these coeducational colleges of the West are 
admirable, the social life is for the most part dis- 
tinctly inferior to that which a girl may enjoy at 
any one of the colleges especially for women. 

But there is still the other objection to coeduca- 
tion to be considered, that summed up in the word 
" love-making." Dr. Stanley Hall has just pub- 
lished an important book to show that during the 
period of adolescence boys and girls should not be 
educated together, and this quite as much for the 
sake of the boys as for the sake of the girls. His 
argument might very well apply, in my opinion, 
to coeducation in colleges. Not only do the girls 
miss the fun pure and simple which is so valuable 
a part of their college life, but they incur the 
grave disadvantage of being exposed at an im- 
pressionable age to the bacillus of sentimentality. 
Not to go into this subject — of which very much 
that is extreme and sensational has been written — 
it is undeniable that a great deal of inconsequent 
" love-making " does exist in coeducational colleges. 
People who discuss this matter are wont to point 
comfortably to the fact that " there has never been 
any scandal" here or there; they seem to think 



Coeducational Colleges of the West 277 

the subject is then satisfactorily dismissed. But if 
college annuals are any fair reflection of college 
life, if the intimate talk of students may be trusted 
as affording authentic insight into the student social 
life, the young men and the girls at coeducational 
universities flirt a good deal, and often carry their 
flirtations to the point which means that one or 
the other or both, or some other girl or man out- 
side, must suffer keenly as a result. Of course a 
girl may take as emotional growing pains whatever 
comes to her in this line while she is at college. 
But surely it is much better for her to put her 
mind upon her lessons, her girl friends, and her 
college frolics during her undergraduate years than 
upon affairs and experiences which have to do with 
sentiment. The proportion of marriages which 
result from ' coeducational colleges seems, on the 
whole, to be small. If it were otherwise, if the 
young men and young women who have studied 
together in these institutions waited for each other 
and married — later — coeducation would, in my 
opinion, have a very strong argument for its main- 
tenance. But the results in marriages appear to 
be far too small to balance the obvious objections 
to the system. In one coeducational university 
where statistics were carefully kept for thirty years, 
only twenty-one couples are recorded among many 



278 The College Girl of America 

hundreds of young men and young women grad- 
uated in the Hberal arts school. " Matrimony and 
education are not so closely allied in coeducational 
institutions as the public imagines," the dean of 
this particular college asserted. But he did not 
say — he probably could not say — that flirtation 
and coeducation are not common running-mates. 




A COEDUCATED GIRL OF THE EAST. 



COEDUCATIONAL COLLEGES OF THE 

EAST 

" The East is so much more conservative than 
the West," the secretary of a coeducational Eastern 
college said, evasively, when I asked him about 
the success of the comparatively recent experiment 
of welcoming girls to his institution ; *' you can't 
change easily in this part of the country the trend 
of public opinion, you know; and I really am not 
at all sure — though, of course, I say this un- 
officially — that to admit girls to our courses has 
been good either for the girls or for the men. You 
see, there were plenty of colleges hereabouts espe- 
cially for women long before we threw open our 
doors to them." 

At Syracuse University they are very proud of 
the fact that there has never needed to be any 
throwing open of doors to women, inasmuch as 
since the day when the corner-stone of the first 
building was laid on the campus, nay, even back 
in the days of the old Genesee College at Lima, 
New York (of which institution this university 

279 



28o The College Girl of America 

is the successor), women have been admitted on 
exactly the same conditions as men to every lecture 
and every department of the university. 

The dormitory system here is of recent establish- 
ment, but this separates the girls only in their way 
of life, not at all in their intellectual privileges or 
interests. There are two of these dormitories, 
Winchell Hall, an imposing four-story building of 
red brick and Indiana limestone, and Haven Hall, 
of brick and Ohio sandstone. The cost of living 
at Syracuse is very low considering the mode of 
life, it being possible to get through for two hundred 
and fifty dollars a year. Those who have visited 
many of the American colleges, and studied the 
position of women in foreign universities, usually 
agree in saying that they have seen no other in- 
stitution where coeducation works more successfully 
than here. The men recognize the fact that women 
have just as good a right here as they (since they 
have been here just as long), and they treat them 
with such respect and consideration as would be 
found in any cultivated society outside. The women 
are admitted to all the departments, but they are 
found chiefly in the two devoted to liberal arts and 
fine arts, none being registered in the engineering 
course, not more than one or two In law, and less 
than fifty in medicine. 



Coeducational Colleges of the East 281 

For their social life, women at Syracuse have 
the intercollegiate sororities, all occupying chapter- 
houses that supply a pleasant home life to their 
members. 

Boston University, founded some thirty years 
ago, has offered coeducation from the start. Its 
departments are arranged largely on the German 
system, and it has no dormitories whatever. But 
in its liberal arts department there are almost three 
hundred and fifty young women who study side 
by side with the young men. And there are very 
many clubs and societies to which both girls and 
men belong. The tuition-fee at Boston University 
is one hundred dollars a year; the lowest possible 
living expense for a girl is reported to be about 
one hundred and fifty dollars. The proportion of 
women to men here, it is worth noting, is three to 
one. The endeavour to keep the sexes balanced 
has been quite unsuccessful. 

So far as the casual student of the matter may 
judge, the most attractive coeducational college in 
the East is Cornell. As soon as it became plain 
that there was a demand on the part of women for 
the privileges of education here, provision was made 
for their accommodation. Sage College, as the 
woman's building is called, has now for almost 
thirty years held its honoured place in Cornell's 



282 The College Girl of America 

plant. The gift of Henry W. Sage, who had long 
been interested in the university, it has splendidly 
realized the prophecy made at the laying of its 
corner-stone : " The efficient force of the human 
race will be multiplied in proportion as women, 
by culture and education, are fitted for new and 
broader spheres of action." Even before the first 
official announcement that Cornell would open its 
doors to women, a girl came from Vassar College 
to ask admittance. What to do with her was a 
puzzle to the authorities — but finally the simple 
expedient of allowing her to stay was adopted. 
The question thus fairly faced, seventeen other 
women were admitted. And from that time on 
— since 1872 — Cornell has had its good share of 
women students. At the opening of Sage College 
in the autumn of 1875, forty-nine women were in 
the university. The latest report gives the present 
undergraduate body of girl students as three hun- 
dred and twenty-six. 

Cornell, it should be said, has figures quite differ- 
ent from those quoted in a preceding chapter con- 
cerning the effect of coeducation upon marriage. 
When the last statistics in regard to this matter 
were collected (in 1895), it was shown that fifty- 
five per cent, of the marriages made by Cornell 
women graduates have been with students or in- 



Coeducational Colleges of the East 283 

structors of the university, and that the number 
of those who had received degrees from Cornell 
and who were married was fifty per cent. The 
mass of information went to show, too, that these 
Cornell women made very good wives, most of them 
being enthusiastic as well as economical household 
managers. "Among all of the women graduates 
of Cornell, none known to us," reported the com- 
mittee who investigated this matter, " have resorted 
to boarding-house life, except as a matter of tem- 
porary expediency ! " 

There is a very fine spirit of comradeship among 
girls who have graduated from this college, so much 
so that — in a small town, at least — a Cornell 
woman immediately looks up any other Cornell 
woman who may happen to come to the place. This 
is undoubtedly a result of the necessarily intimate 
way in which Sage College women all know each 
other. Though in the past few years the university 
has more than doubled its dormitory accommodation 
for women, the girls are thrown constantly together, 
and have a very fine college spirit. Some of the 
women's fraternities, too, have purchased substan- 
tial homes of its own; and the college life has 
been further enriched by providing ample gym- 
nasium facilities and a good swimming-tank for 
women students. While Cornell has been doubling 



284 The College (jirl of America 

its dormitory accommodations, it h'as also been 
doubling its library, with the result that it has now 
one of the best general collections, as well as the 
most adequate special library in its part of the 
country. The expense at this college is one hundred 
dollars for tuition fee, and, at the cheapest, five 
dollars a week for girl students. 

Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, enjoys the 
distinction of being the first educational institution 
on the Atlantic seaboard to receive young women 
on the same terms with men collegians. The dean 
of women here looks carefully after the comfort 
of girl students, finding them pleasant places to 
board in private families, for the very reasonable 
sum of five dollars or less per week. As tuition 
at this college is only fifty dollars, a girl can get 
through quite comfortably for two hundred a year. 
The faculty realize one of their highest pleasures 
in helping young men and young women to solve 
the problem of ways and means. Bates alone, of 
New England colleges, still encourages needy stu- 
dents to teach during a part of each year. And 
that a girl does not find such teaching, under proper 
restrictions, to be at all harmful to her scholarship, 
may be gathered from the fact that for two succes- 
sive seasons Bates College girls have won the prize 
offered by the Colonial Dames of the State of 



Coeducational Colleges of the East 285 

Maine for the best paper on colonial history. The 
registration at Bates shows about one hundred and 
thirty girls. 

There is a common saying about Boston that any 
point from which one can see Tufts College is 
properly enough a part of that very desirable resi- 
dential city. And inasmuch as Tufts, on its lofty 
height, is clearly discernible for a radius of many 
miles, the greater Boston is quite a big place. Dur- 
ing recent years Tufts College women, like the hill 
of their Alma Mater, stand out fine and strong in 
the big busy world. Women were first admitted 
to this college in 1892, as a result of strong peti- 
tions sent in by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore and by 
alumni with daughters to educate. All departments 
are now open to girls, and they attend classes and 
study side by side with men. In numbers they are 
something over one hundred against twice as many 
men students. The relations between the boys and 
girls here are very cordial, a good deal of their 
social life being enjoyed together. Girls are re- 
quired to live in Metcalf Hall, or in some other of 
the supervised homes. The former building is a 
very imposing edifice, and bears on a tablet in the 
hall this fine inscription : " In honour of women, 
and as a help to her higher education. Albert 
Metcalf.'* 



286 The College Girl of America 

The social activities at Tufts are under the con- 
trol of a women's committee consisting of three 
wives of professors. For a night upon which they 
wish to give an entertainment, the girls, having 
consulted this committee, register three weeks in 
advance. Of sororities there are two or three here. 
The college was Universalist in its origin, and 
girls as well as men students are expected to attend 
the fifteen-minute chapel service at half-past eight 
every morning. The Sunday choir at the chapel 
is made up of girls and men students, who wear 
academic gowns and contribute in a marked degree 
to the attractiveness of the service. Although there 
are no outdoor athletics at Tufts, girls have the 
privilege of the beautiful golf-links on the brow of 
their hill, and are provided besides with tennis- 
courts of their own. Two hours gymnasium work 
a week is required. Four hundred dollars a year 
is about the lowest sum for which a girl can com- 
fortably go through Tufts. 

Swarthmore College, in the town of the same 
name near Philadelphia, has an almost equal number 
(about one hundred) of men and women students. 
The foundation of this institution is of the Friends 
persuasion, though Christian character and a high 
standard of scholarship are chiefly regarded. The 
college buildings and the campus, which comprises 



. Coeducational Colleges of the East 287 

over two hundred acres of land, occupy a command- 
ing position with a view of the Delaware River for 
several miles. Swarthmore undertakes to provide 
college life in a home setting; to supply an atmos- 
phere in which manly and womanly character may 
develop naturally and completely. The students 
meet in the dining-hall as in their homes; and a 
social hour in the reception-parlour precedes each 
evening's work. The intercourse of the men and 
women is, however, under the care of the dean and 
her assistants, and it is the aim of the college to 
make it a means of social culture. Parrish Hall 
supplies dormitory accommodation for women 
students in its east wing. Board and tuition here 
cost four hundred and fifty dollars a year. Students 
are expected to attend Friends' meeting, " held every 
First Day morning, in the meeting-house on the 
college grounds, as well as the daily assemblage of 
students and instructors for the reading of the Bible, 
or other suitable exercises, which are preceded and 
followed by a period of silence." The spirit at this 
college is admirable, the constant effort (which is 
successfully realized) being to mould the characters 
of the undergraduates, and bring their life into 
conformity with the highest Christian standards. 

Women were first admitted to Colby College, 
Maine, in 187 1. In the beginning they were re- 



288 The College Girl of America 

ceived on precisely the same terms as men, but in 
1880, upon the suggestion of President Small, who, 
it is interesting to note, is now professor of sociol- 
ogy at Chicago University, and was one of the most 
ardent advocates of the recent " segregation " move- 
ment there, a coordinate division for young women 
was here organized. Since this step was taken, 
there have been three times as many girls at Colby 
as ever before, i. e., about seventy-five as against 
the twenty-five previously there. Which may possi- 
bly be interpreted as woman's approval of coor- 
dination as opposed to coeducation. The men's and 
women's division still use the same chapel and the 
same lecture-halls, but they recite together only in 
elective courses where the classes are small. At 
present there are three residence halls especially for 
women at Colby, all three being in charge of a 
resident matron under a dean of women. Board in 
these halls costs three dollars each week. Thus al- 
most the lowest living expense possible here is one 
hundred and thirty dollars a year, to which should 
be added sixty dollars for tuition fee. The number 
of men students is only slightly in excess of the 
women. 

At the University of Vermont the tuition costs 
precisely the same as at Colby. But the living 
expense is higher. Young women are admitted to 




A WESLEYAN GIRL. 



290 The College Girl of America 

boys. I like the social life of a college where there 
are a lot oi men to have a good time with." Which 
confession had certainly the recommendation of 
honesty. 



AFTER COLLEGE — WHAT? 

Our colleges will have graduated this year, as 
for several years past, thousands of alert, healthy, 
mentally well-equipped girls, a large proportion of 
whom must enter the world's life and become self- 
supporting. The great and pressing problem is, 
"How?" 

No longer in these days is it a foregone conclu- 
sion that because a girl has received a good educa- 
tion she will support herself as a teacher. Happily 
for our children, the teaching profession has now 
attained a dignity which places it beyond the hit-or- 
miss services of any college graduate. Moreover, 
girls themselves are branching out in this twen- 
tieth century into trades and professions which 
offer more opportunity for individual resource and 
individual enterprise than does the profession of 
the pedagogue. The girl of the period wishes to get 
into touch with the larger life of the world, to feel, 
through her occupations, some pulsations of our 
own Time Spirit. For this reason she seeks new 

fields of labour. But, rather paradoxically, many 

291 



292 The College Girl of America 

of the new activities in which educated women are 
engaging with signal success prove, when closely 
examined, to be reversions tO' the primitive occupa- 
tions of their grandmothers. Only the aspect of 
them has changed. 

A notable example of this is afforded by the highly 
successful bakery recently started in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, by two clear-eyed, level-headed, well- 
born, and well-bred college girls. The furniture 
in the salesroom of this unique establishment was 
after the most approved William Morris standards ; 
on the walls were quotations from Tolstoian books 
on the dignity of labour; beautiful pictures, taste- 
fully framed, decorative palms, and a handsome 
rug completed the equipment of this highly inter- 
esting bake-shop. And here, in the artistic setting 
they had created for their excellent wares, the two 
college girls themselves were kept busy all the time 
disposing of their bread and breadsticks for just 
twice the sum charged by other bakers. 

" Without a vision," remarked wise old Solomon, 
" the people perish." The young brains behind this 
Laboratory Kitchen (so successful that it now has 
enlarged quarters in Boston) have caught the vision 
of better things in the industrial order, and they 
are inspiringly working it out. That their efforts 
are meeting with appreciation is a tribute to the 



After College — What? 293 

public's receptivity as well as to the value of their 
idea. To this idea there are, of course, two dis- 
tinct sides — that of the worker and that of the 
product. Of the former too much can scarcely be 
said. But on the latter it is not our purpose here 
to dwell. Suffice it, then, to remark on this point 
that bread for which people are glad to pay twice 
the ordinary price must possess a merit not to be 
had in the wares of the corner shop. That is plain 
on the surface. 

Now for the workers themselves, and the idea 
for which their Laboratory Kitchen stands — an 
idea very well worth publishing tO' intelligent young 
women the country over. Miss Stevenson, the man- 
ager, is a South Carolinian, and when she lectures, 
as she sometimes does, on her trade, she begins by 
remarking : " My grandfather was a judge, but I 
am a baker." She firmly believes, as one very soon 
discovers from a talk with her, that there is not 
really, and so should never have been socially, that 
great gulf we have honoured for years between 
people who work with their brains and those who 
work with their hands ; and she feels strongly that 
there is a place commercially for the college-bred 
in the improvement of the quality of the necessaries 
of life. Hence the text engraved on every package 



294 The College Girl of America 

that leaves the shop : " There is nothing finer than 
common bread, unless it be bread of a finer kind." 

The way in which this original young woman 
came into the profession of bread-making is most 
interesting, for naturally something akin to " con- 
version " had to be experienced by a Southerner of 
aristocratic training before the point of view that 
bread is worthy of a life's devotion should be at- 
tained. While a student at Converse College in 
her native State, Miss Stevenson became greatly 
interested in chemistry, specializing for three years 
on the subject. Later she spent several terms at 
Radcliffe College, Cambridge, studying English, that 
she might be able to express clearly and well what 
she had to say about chemistry. All this time her 
intention was to follow the beaten track, and teach 
chemistry. At about this stage of her student ca- 
reer, however, she fell under the influence of a large- 
brained woman whose breadth of scholarship and 
sane philosophy of life communicated to her such 
a grasp upon the underlying principles of things 
as was calculated to work a veritable revolution in 
the girl's point of view. There began to be borne 
in upon Miss Stevenson the truth that bread, because 
it is one of the necessities of life, is a thing needed 
in perfection. Whether there would be a demand 
for a bread made in perfection she did not know. 



After College — What? 295 

But the accident of meeting then Miss Frances EUi- 
ott, the daughter of a Toronto physician, who had 
likewise speciahzed in chemistry, and was wilHng 
to make with her the hazard of a bakery such as 
she had thought out, decided her course. Miss 
ElHott had also been a pupil of the inspiring teacher, 
and she was a graduate of the University of To- 
ronto. Further, she, too, had studied in Boston, 
and knew its ways. Cambridge was accordingly 
chosen as the place in which to make the experiment 
of the Laboratory Kitchen. 

The girls had been told that the city on the Charles 
was hospitable to ideals, but at first they did not find 
this to be altogether true. For some time, indeed, 
the college folk, with whom they had previously 
maintained pleasant social relations, looked upon 
their venture askance. Then one day the much- 
lamented and universally beloved Mrs. Alice Free- 
man Palmer, hearing that two college girls had 
started a Laboratory Kitchen there in her neighbour- 
hood, went down to their pretty salesroom, and over 
the purchase of some bread for her own lunch-table 
made their acquaintance, and asked permission to 
call upon them in the little home they had set up 
a block or two away from the bakeshop. After 
that there was no question in the minds of Canta- 
brigians. 



296 The College Girl of America 

At the beginning, while they were perfecting their 
recipes, these two young enthusiasts did all the bak- 
ing themselves. Within three months they paid 
expenses. The demand proved to be much greater 
than they had expected. '' I find people appreciate 
a good thing in any line when it is made with an 
eye on the article, and not on the cash register," 
commented Miss Stevenson, in speaking of her im- 
mediate success. 

" Personally," she continued, " I am immensely 
interested in the economic side of this business. I 
myself so firmly believe that people need workers 
more than talkers that I am very glad indeed to have 
proved that a girl can earn a living in labour of this 
kind." 

Miss Stevenson defends, whenever she has oppor- 
tunity, her firm conviction that the process of bread- 
making is very interesting to the educated woman 
because of the intelligence required to- perfect it. 
And bread-making appeals, for far-reaching reasons, 
she holds, to the college woman. First, because of 
its fundamental relation to daily living — right 
nourishment of the body being the first step toward 
right behaviour of the mind ; second, because of its 
possibilities in what the modern mind realizes to be 
the elementary and very significant field of life, the 
business field, this occupation, she says, should claim 



After College—- What? 297 

a high place. Business is to-day the great field in 
which all classes are included. And yet it is the 
only field which has no controlling ideal. There 
is but one way, she and her partner believe, to save 
the nation from the present warfare between master 
and slave, and that is for the educated people to 
come down from their vantage-ground as onlookers, 
and enter the workaday arena, matching trickery 
with truth, selfishness with service. Then, too, there 
is room for the college-bred woman here — which 
is much. 

Something like these same ideals — though per- 
haps not so clearly defined — were the compelling 
motives which led two Wellesley girls to undertake 
the management, at Wellesley, Massachusetts, of a 
tea-room, which has now grown to be a College Inn. 
The students of the college subscribed for the stock 
in this inn, and thus the clever young " promoters," 
themselves Wellesley graduates, secured the funds 
necessary to the erection of a fine new building. 
And it is in this building that the restaurant which 
had already become a feature of student life at 
Wellesley is now carried on. Further, the house 
affords ample accommodation for alumnae returning 
to their Alma Mater for a few days' visit, the prefer- 
ence being given at crowded times to graduates who 
are also stockholders. In connection with the inn 



298 The College Girl of America 

and its excellent restaurant, these enterprising girls 
started a successful weekly paper, the first ever made 
to pay in a girls' college. Business ability, social 
gifts, and a devoted love for the college with which 
their enterprise is unofficially connected, may be held 
to be the qualities responsible for their decided suc- 
cess. Certainly they had had absolutely no expe- 
rience in hotel or restaurant work when they opened 
their tea-room. They only knew that college girls 
are eternally hungry, and that a pleasant, well-con- 
ducted little tea-shop would receive plenty of patron- 
age. So they got in " Aunt Mary Jane," a negro 
cook who had been in the family, and took a shop. 
Then the Inn grew to fill a very real and long-felt 
need. And though the corporation is not yet many 
years old, it is already very firmly established, and 
pays handsome dividends to its stockholders. 

One other college woman venture of a decidedly 
domestic nature is the Sunshine Laundry, carried 
on in Brookline, Massachusetts, by two Smith gradu- 
ates. A feature of this establishment is the cleanli- 
ness and airiness of the rooms in which the work 
is done. Higher prices than are commonly charged 
for laundry work are here demanded, but none of 
the hundreds of regular customers on the establish- 
ment's list demur at larger bills, since these ensure 
better service than could be anywhere else obtained. 



After College — What? 299 

Another college-bred girl that I know has gone 
into the employment business. From her own ex- 
perience she had observed that ladies are in constant 
tribulation because of inability to secure good help 
willing to stay in service. And from her work in 
a college settlement house she had come to have a 
good understanding of the servant's side of the ques- 
tion. She saw clearly that what was needed was 
a higher sense of personal obligation on the part 
of both people making the contract. She allied 
herself, therefore, with a woman's association of 
standing, and is going far to solve the problem by 
dissolving the difficulties of the servant situation. 
For, while the mistress makes concessions to the 
maid in this establishment, the maid similarly binds 
herself to the mistress. Then, if both are honest — 
as they usually are — the contract entered into bids 
fair to be a tolerably stable one. This is a work 
which requires no capital whatever, and one in which 
any girl interested in matters sociological, and pos- 
sessed of warm human interest and a fair amount 
of tact, might easily engage without leaving her 
home, provided, of course, that the community in 
which she lives is large enough to give opportunity 
for usefulness in this line. 

Another of the new social forces, which are doing 
so much tO' make the world a sweeter place to live in, 



300 The College Girl of America 

is that exercised by the woman rent collector. It 
is the duty of a young woman filling this position 
to see that the rents of buildings under her charge 
are promptly paid and that the tenements are kept 
in repair. But her work is much finer and broader 
than this mere business side of it, for she can help 
sustain a high standard of home life in the tene- 
ments, and, by her influence, lead the tenants to 
cleaner, better ways of living than they have known. 
In establishing order and cleanliness, in managing 
the property with justice to both tenant and land- 
lord, her duties as agent end. But having gained 
her tenants' confidence by fair treatment, she can 
help them as a friend. Indeed, they will often ap- 
peal to her for advice or sympathy. Her help, 
though philanthropy, is not charity, however. Grow- 
ing out of fair business relations, it has a per- 
manency which philanthropy pure and simple does 
not ensure. 

The work of a social secretary likewise appeals 
strongly to the girl trained in college. With the 
rise of the factory system, the corporation, and the 
trust, the interests of business have become so great 
as to absorb the time of those directly responsible 
for it. The new conditions have created a new 
need, — that of a woman who can devote her en- 
tire time to becoming acquainted with employees. 



After College — What? 301 

who can attend to the sanitary and physical condi- 
tions under which they work and secure better re- 
suhs o>f labour. To do this requires training, tact, 
intelligence, sympathy, and experience. The social 
secretary must possess originality and a jx>wer of 
adaptation, together with a capacity for hard work. 
She must oversee the library and superintend the 
entertainments to raise money for it and other pur- 
poses. She must watch the lunch-rooms and see 
that a proper standard of food is maintained. She 
must be prime mover in planning outings of all 
kinds. If a school for cash or errand boys is started, 
she must act as its supervisor. In cases of 
illness or distress, it is she who seeks out the absent 
employee, and brings the necessary aid. If a mutual 
benefit fund exist among the operatives, she takes 
an active interest in its workings. The daily re- 
quests for her advice or assistance present a variety 
ranging through matters of health, board, courses 
of study for the evening, salary, dentists, vacations, 
and shirt-waist patterns. " But far above all this," 
as a successful social secretary has well said, " rests 
the individual personal touch, the high ideals of life 
made attractive, the power to take a girl whose 
breeding has been of the ' tumbled up ' sort and to 
reveal to her the * vision splendid.' " 

In creative work of the arts and crafts variety, 



302 The College Girl of America 

too, as well as along ameliorative lines, college girls 
may to-day do much to help the world. William 
Morris is the controlling ideal of one unique little 
Boston shop to which I greatly like to go occasion- 
ally. This is the bookbindery of Miss Mary Sears, 
high up in a building opposite Boston Common. 
There are several women bookbinders in the coun- 
try, but Miss Sears stands alone, I fancy, in the 
spirit with which she has undertaken her work. 
Trained in the best ateliers of London and Paris, 
she is an enthusiastic teacher of her craft as well as 
an excellent binder. But she accepts as pupils only 
such choice spirits as are, like herself, in love with 
books and bookbinding. All the work in her little 
establishment is done by the fingers of these enthusi- 
astic apprentices, and every book bound reflects the 
intelligence of the women concerned in it. On a 
dainty morocco volume of Keats would be traced, 
perhaps, some lines which would show at once that 
the worker herself knew and loved the figures on 
the Greek Urn. Such binding as this naturally at- 
tracts to the little shop the most conspicuous bibli- 
ophiles of Boston. Consequently the good work 
pays, as the late Henry Demarest Lloyd contended 
that work with high ideals always will. 

For the girl whose lot is cast in the country, as 
well as for city maidens, there are, however, new 



After College — What? 303 

and interesting lines of labour. Miss Mary Cutler, 
of Holliston, Massachusetts, left several years ago 
with some greenhouse property on her hands, re- 
solved to make herself mistress of horticultural and 
floricultural lore. Accordingly, she has worked and 
studied until to-day her small fruit department is 
stocked with many varieties hardly obtainable else- 
where. And she is able to offer ornamental trees 
and shrubs of rare and rich beauty. Pecuniarily as 
well as in other ways. Miss Cutler has made a de- 
cided success of this work. For years Margaret 
Deland, the Boston author, has raised jonquils in 
her window garden, which she is able to sell each 
spring at a good price. Mrs. Deland is, therefore, 
an enthusiastic advocate of window-gardening for 
profit. I know, too, a girl in Long Island, New 
York, who, though she lives some seventy-five miles 
from the metropolis, her market, is able to make 
a very good income raising violets for the city flo- 
rists and for private customers. 

Deerfield, Massachusetts, offers, however, the 
most remarkable instance of success in home indus- 
tries afforded by any country-place of which I know. 
Concerning three of these only I will speak : that oi 
magazine illustration by photographs — in which 
the Misses Allen, of this quaint old town, have made 
a great success ; the blue and white embroidery now 



304 The College Girl of America 

renowned the country over, and the basket-making. 
The world knows Deerfield Village by its Society 
of Blue and White Needlework, formed by Miss 
Margaret Whiting and Miss Miller, residents of the 
town. This society has now been in existence some 
half a dozen years, and at the present time there 
are nearly a score of women working on the designs 
which Miss Miller and Miss Whiting have adapted 
from the old embroideries and bits of china in which 
Deerfield homes abound. Embroidery in the old 
days was a very different thing from buying a piece 
of cloth with a design stamped and the silk selected. 
When a girl preparing her trousseau decided to 
make a set of curtains and a spread for the best bed, 
she took carefully selected flax, hetchelled and spun 
it, wove it into cloth, and bleached it on the grass. 
Some of the linen thread she dyed two or three 
shades of blue in the indigo-tub which always stood 
in the chimney-corner. Then she drew a design 
on the linen, very lightly, making it up as she went 
along, with a bit of charcoal. This design she filled 
in with queer, fanciful stitches. These old-fashioned 
embroideries are for the most part Oriental in char- 
acter, and were probably suggested by the figures 
on Eastern shawls which were brought home by sea- 
captains. But now, through the Deerfield Blue and 
White Society, many a home w^hich cannot boast of 



After College — What? 305 

sea-captain ancestors enjoys the graceful patterns 
of the olden times. 

Here, then, are a dozen concrete examples of suc- 
cess in new enterprises undertaken by educated 
women. What some girls have done other girls 
can do in these uncrowded fields. But chiefly for 
their value as suggestions, as possible points of de- 
parture to still other original occupations, have these 
accounts been given. In woman's work, as else- 
where, pioneering, difficult as it is, offers its own 
peculiar zest and its own rich reward. And never 
have the industrial, commercial, and sociological 
fields been so white for the harvest as now. 

Of literary women there are, of course, hundreds 
who have had a college training. Some are by no 
means distinguished in the world of letters, but 
a few others — such as Miss Josephine Preston 
Peabody, of Boston, a poet of really remarkable 
gifts — have made reputations while still very 
young. As artists and architects, too, college girls 
are winning renown. And at least two or three are 
successful actresses. In musical composition and 
in playwriting, college-bred women have been de- 
cidedly successful — and one college woman has 
even added a new chapter to the history of the 
world ! 

The lady to confer the last-named distinction 



3o6 The College Girl of America 

upon women's colleges was Miss Harriet Boyd 
(born in Boston some thirty odd years ago, and 
graduated from Smith College before she was 
twenty-one), who became a student at the American 
School of Classical Studies at Athens, for the pur- 
pose of deciphering descriptions. But Miss Boyd 
desired to excavate, and this she began to do in the 
spring of 1901 on the island of Crete, where ar- 
chaeologists of all nations had vigorously set to 
work. Not until she began her work at St. An- 
thony's Hill, Kavousi, however, did she really strike 
anything of interest. Here, within a mile of the 
main highway to Crete, from a small excavation 
which at the time seemed almost a failure, were 
exhumed some bronze tools and potsherds which 
offered evidence conclusive that a Bronze Age 
settlement had been discovered. Miss Boyd says 
that she lives at all times, while in charge of an 
expedition, in the best style possible — and this not 
only that she may hospitably entertain such archseo^ 
logical guests as come her way, but also for the 
sake of the impression a good mode of life makes 
upon the peasants. It is curious to think that an 
English tea-basket goes out each afternoon at four 
o'clock to this Smith College girl and her asso- 
ciate who are engaged in directing some hundred 



After College — What? 307 

workmen in the excavation of a city of the Bronze 
Age. 

In the professions, college-bred women continue 
to be broadly successful. The number of them who 
are nobly filling educational positions is very large; 
in the ministry they may be found by the dozens 
in these days; of lawyers there are perhaps a few 
hundred in the United States, and of women phy- 
sicians possibly a thousand or two. In this last- 
named profession the college girl will in the future, 
according to some authorities, find particularly 
good chances of usefulness and of pecuniary success. 
One very charming college-bred woman physician 
that I know, who has to-day a ten thousand dollar 
practice and is able to be a means of inspiration 
to a hundred or so devoted women patients, said 
to me recently : 

" A woman has every chance of a competence as 
a physician, a bigger chance, I should say, than in 
any other profession she can follow. For equip- 
ment she should have a college education or its 
equivalent (that within herself which will enable 
her to grasp things and escape narrowness), good 
physical health, a not toO' emotional temperament, 
and a diploma from a good coeducational medical 
school. This last qualification seems to me very 
important, for the opportunity to observe how men 



3o8 The College Girl of America 

take hold of things serves to modify her view of 
humanity in general. Then she should go, with 
money enough to keep herself for awhile, to a 
locality where she means to stay. If you ask me 
to what school she should have resorted, I would 
say that Johns Hopkins is good for allopathic and 
Boston University for homoeopathic training. She 
should have a comfortable practice established 
at the end of eight or ten years. The money reward 
is great, as I have said, but of course the work 
itself is its chief inducement to a right-minded girl. 
More and more women are coming to use women 
physicians. Many of the best-known men prac- 
titioners in this city send their women patients to 
me constantly nowadays, for certain kinds of treat- 
ment." 

Further to enlarge upon college-bred women in 
the professions were unnecessary. They have estab- 
lished their right to be here, because they have 
proved their intrinsic purity of aim and their capa- 
bility for usefulness. 



CONCLUSION 

There can be no doubt about it, the first year 
and a half after graduation is rather a painful period 
to the college girl. She may, of course, be at a 
professional school, in which case she is still study- 
ing, and, therefore, still in a congenial environment. 
But if the recent graduate decides to go straight into 
some kind of work, or if, on the other hand, she 
returns to the old home, the process of " adjust- 
ment " is difficult. She finds it hard to fit in 
with other people. Not that she lacks social apti- 
tude, but that she has for four years been meeting 
those who for the most part understood her and 
her ambitions. 

All the world makes way for the college 
student; for the college graduate there is too 
often only criticism and crowding. Yet since 
the drama of human life is not a game of solitaire, 
fit in she must. The years which Dr. Hanford 
Henderson has so aptly called those of the " ex- 
perimental life " are very trying to the girl's ideals. 
Her salvation at this stage would seem to lie in an 

309 



310 The College Girl of America 

earnest resolution not to do anything which is not 
really uplifting. Keep her ideals she must, if college 
is to be her benefactor. Her difficulty lies in apply- 
ing them, in strenuously striving for unfaltering 
practical impulses which shall lead to her highest 
development. 

Let us see what these may be. Perhaps the girl 
wants to gO' away from home and work in the 
world with men. Now, if she has this desire within 
her, it seems to me better to let her have her way. 
" If the girl has right royal good sense," says a 
recent writer in this connection, " there will in time 
develop in her character areas of wisdom, and she 
will come back all the more contented after her little 
fling in the busy world to marry some wisely chosen 
and fortunate young man, or to comfort her father 
and mother in their declining years and hold her 
sway in the home, well sunned and ripened by her 
added experience." 

These seem to me wise words. I would simply 
wish to suggest that the family should in no way 
curtail this " experience " by means of an allow- 
ance. 

If you aim to be independent, girls, be inde- 
pendent. You have no real right to be earning 
your living when it is not necessary for you to enter 
the economic struggle. The place you occupy may 



Conclusion 311 

mean life and hope to another, and its lack dis- 
couragement and despair. Yet if you will work, 
support yourself wholly. Pay your board, buy your 
own clothes. Don't let the family send you money. 
If there is to be any money-sending, you should 
do it. 

But very often the home people do not need 
money and do need you. The natural and simple 
division of labour is the one that assigns to women 
the duties and activities that centre 'round the 
hearth. It is a sociological fact that women and 
the home, with all the institutions that spring from 
it, are interdependent. If it's dull at home, that's 
your fault. You have had splendid educational 
opportunities. Use them for the good of your kith 
and kin and kind. An intelligent woman should 
be for all her neighbours a strong stimulus to self- 
activity. It is the nature of an enlightened mind 
to diffuse light, of a generous soul to make love 
prevail, of a noble character to build character. 
College should make a girl eminently fit for a full 
home life, social in the deepest sense. If she goes 
home to uncongenial surroundings she has her task 
cut out for her at once. Here is infinite opportunity 
for the exercise of womanly tact. She must change 
things, of course, — college years were thrown away 
else, — but she must mould her environment to meet 



312 The College Girl of America 

her ideals with such sweetness and grace and good- 
will that all her neighbours will marvel at the beau- 
tifying influences of college upon character. 

She must see to it that her impulses are practical 
ones, however. If necessary, she must really help 
at home, work with those hands that have hereto- 
fore fingered lexicons. It won't hurt her at all. 

If she's the right kind of girl her intellect will 
take care of itself. Almost every village in these 
days has its library and its magazine club. Then 
she will, of course, own the more important works 
in the world's literature, and carefully con them 
again and again. 

And for society, she will have city friends in 
summer, with their talk of plays and lectures and 
picture-galleries, and in winter there will be the 
townsfolk, from whom, as she will readily recog- 
nize, she can learn much not written in books. The 
young people of the village she should encourage 
to go tO' school and college. The selectmen she 
should inspire with a desire for street-lamps. To 
the minister she can suggest institutional methods 
of church work, and to the school committee im- 
proved text-books and enlightened educational 
ideas. She will thus be a power for good in the 
community from which was derived the money spent 
on her education. Surely this is rendering to Caesar 



Conclusion 313 

the things that are Caesar's — a process recom- 
mended ahke by poHtical and social economy. 

Woman's real interest and happiness do not con- 
sist in the number of lines that draw from the home 
to the outside world, but in the multitude of avenues 
by which she may bring the best from the world 
without to illuminate the home. If a girl must 
work in the world, let us help her to work nobly. 
But let us urge her to stay, if she can, quietly at 
home " in that state of life to which it has pleased 
God to call her." She need neither stagnate nor 
shrivel in her village atmosphere. It is her business 
to grow there just as she would anywhere else. If 
she neglects this she has in a very literal sense missed 
her vocation. 



THE END. 



Index 



Addams, Jane, 199. 

Adalbert College, 275. 

Agassiz, Mrs. Louis, 98, 99, 
109. 

Agnes Scott School, 238. 

Ainsworth, Mrs., 196, 199. 

Amherst College, 9, 194. 

Anderson, Mrs. A. A., 135. 

Andrews, President, 164. 

"Antigone," 65. 

Applebee, Constance, 12. 

Arkadelphia Methodist Col- 
lege, 240. 

Arnold, Sarah Louise, 219, 
221. 

"Athalie," 108. 

Atkins, Mary, 208. 

Auburn, N. Y., 171. 

Aurora, N. Y., 187. 

Ayres, Dr. Howard, 264. 

Barnard College, 130-143. 
Barnard, President, 130, 131, 

132. 
Bates College, 284. 
Bates, Katharine Lee, 49. 
Benjamin, Simeon, 172. 
Bernard, Sir Francis, 2. 
Bernhardt, 108. 
Bethel, Conn., 9. 
Boston University, 281, 308. 



Boyd, Harriet A., 306. 
Boyden's, 24. 
Briggs, President, 109. 
Brinckerhoff, Mrs. Van 

Wyck, 135. 
Brook Farm, 105. 
Brooks, Rev. Arthur, D. D., 

134- 
Brown, Samuel Robbins, 171. 
Brown University, 168. 
Bryn Mawr College, 1 18-129, 

242. 
Butterfield, Alice, 17. 

Cable, George W., 25. 
Carnegie, Andrew, 79. 
Cary Collegiate Institute, 195. 
Cayuga Lake, 187. 
Cazenove, 33, 34,. 35- 
Century Magazine, x., 15, 

121. 
Channing, Lucy, 105. 
Channing, William Henry, 

105. 
Chapin, Henrietta Sheldon, 9. 
Chicago University, 243, 246, 

288. 
Clieveland College for 

Women, 275. 
Cleveland, Mrs. Grover, 188. 
Colby College, 287, 288. 



31S 



3i6 



The College Girl of America 



Columbia College, 130. 
Converse College, 294. 
Cooke, Mrs. J. P., 98. 
Cornell University, 242, 281 - 

284. 
Cowles, Rev. Aucrustus W., 

172. 
Craigie House, loi. 
Curtis, George William, 58. 
Cutler, Mary, 303. 

Dalton Hall, 119. 
Daily Palo Alto, 255. 
Dana, Chief Justice, 105. 
Dana, Sophia, 105. 
Daniels, Mabel W., 112. 
Davis, Fannie Stearns, 19. 
Deerfield, Mass., 303. 
Delbrueck, Doctor, 246. 
Deland, Margaret, 303. 
Dixon, President, 226, 227. 
Durant, Henry Fowle, 31, 32, 

38, 48, 53. 
Durant, Pauline Fowle, 36, 

37- 
Duse, 106, 107. 

Eliot, George, 180. 

Eliot, President, 96, 98, no, 

223. 
Elliott, Frances, 295. 
Elmira College, 170 - 182. 
Emery, Dean, 168. 
Enosburg, Vt., 206. 
Everett, Edward, 105. 

" Fair Harvard," 105. 
Fay House, 96, 104, 106. 
Fay, Maria, 106. 
Fiske, Mrs. Josiah M., 135. 
Foster, Elene, 143. 
Fowle, Major, 34, 36. 

Genesee College, 279. 
Geneva, 33. 

Gill, Laura Drake, 136. 
Gilman, Arthur, 98. 
Gilman, Mrs. Arthur, 98. 
Gilman, Rev. Samuel, 104. 



Girard College, 183. 
Goucher, John F., 144, 145, 

149, 153- 
Greene, Rev. John M., D. D., 

I, 3, 4, 5- . 
Gulliver, Julia H., 201. 
Gurney, Mrs. E. W., 98, loi. 

Hall, Dr. Stanley, 276. 

Hamburg, 33. 

Harkness, Albert, ifg. 

Harper, President, 246. 

Harvard " Annex," 98, lOi. 

Harvard Graduates' Maga- 
zine, no. 

Harvard University, 96. 

Hatfield, 2, 5, 6. 

Hazard, Caroline, 52. 

Hearst, Mrs. Phebe, 249. 

Heath, Florence E., 112. 

Henderson, Dr. Hanford, 309. 

Hewes, Hon. David, 215. 

Higginson, Thomas Went- 
worth, 105. 

Hill, Lucille E., 50. 

Hinsdale, Phebe Allen, 170, 
171. 

Hollingsworth, Grace, 112. 

Hollins Institute, 235. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 105. 

Honolulu, 214. 

Hooper, Rebecca Lane, 112. 

Horsford, Lilian, 98. 

Horsford, Professor, 40. 

Howe, Mrs Julia Ward, 53. 

Indiana University, 260, 261. 

Jayne, Violet, 261. 

Jewett, Miss, 89. 

Johns Hopkins University, 

120, 145, 308. 
Jordan, Mrs., 256. 

Kansas State University, 267, 

268. 
Keller, Helen, 114, 115. 
Kelly, Myra, 143. 



Index 



317 



La Democracia, 212. 

Leach, Professor, 97. 

Le Gallienne, Richard, 143- 

Leland Stanford, Jr., Uni- 
versity, 255-258. 

Livermore, Mrs. Mary A., 97, 
285. 

Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 302. 

Longfellow, 51. 

Longfellow, Miss Alice M., 
98, lOI. 

Low, Seth, 136. 

Lowder, Mrs., 179. 

Lucy Cobb Institute, 237. 

Lynchburg, Va., 154. 

Lyon, Mary, 2, 71, 72, 74, 76, 
77, 93, 171, 207. 

Mabie, Hamilton Wright, ix. 
MacDowell, E. A., 192. 
MacKenzie, Rev. Alexander 

Cameron, 174. 
Mary Baldwin Seminary, 236. 
McCarroll, Frances, 17. 
McClung, Alice, 236. 
McCracken, Elizabeth, 20. 
McKinley, President, 89. 
McManus, Seumas, 143. 
Metcalf. Albert, 285. 
Mills College, 206 - 216. 
Mills, Rev. Cyrus T., 207, 

210. 
Mills, Sarah Tolman, 206, 

210, 213, 
Mitchell, Maria, 63. 
Morgan, Mrs. Henry. 189. 
Morningside College, 245. 
Mortarboard, 140. 
Mt. Holyoke College, 71 - 95, 

194, 206. 
Moulshan, Lady, 102. 
Moulshan, Sir Thomas, 102, 

103. 

Newburgh, 56. 

Newcomb College, 225 - 232. 
Newcomb, Mrs. Josephine 
Louise, 227, 231. 



Newcomb, Sophie, 230. 

New England Magazine, x., 
6, 100. 

Newman's " Idea of a Uni- 
versity," 28. 

New Orleans, 228, 232. 

"Noah's Flood," 87. 

Noanett House, 39, 40. 

Norfolk, Eng., 54. 

Northampton, i - 30. 

Northwestern University, 
268 - 270. 

Norumbega, 40. 

Oakfield, 195. 

Oberlin College, 270 - 274. 

Oberlin, John Frederick, 271. 

Ohio State University, 275. 

Outlook, The, X. 

Owasco, N. Y., 171. 

Page, Walter S., 143. 
Palmer, Alice Freeman, 40, 

295- 
Palmer, George Herbert, vii. 
Peabody, Josephine Preston, 

305. 
Pembroke Hall, 163. 
"Phedre," 108. 
Plymouth Hall, 22. 
Poughkeepsie, 54, 65. 
Putnam, Mrs. George Haven, 

136. 

" Queen's College," 2. 
Quincy, President, vii. 

Radcliflfe, Ann, 103. 
Radcliffe College, 96 - 117. 
Radcliife Magazine, 114. 
Randolph - Macon Woman's 

College, 154-162. 
Reed, Helen Leah, 100. 
Repplier, Agnes, 143. 
Ripley, George, 105. 
Rockford College, 194-205. 
Roger Williams College, 164. 



3i8 



The College Girl of America 



"Romance of Old New Eng- 
land Rooftrees," io6. 
Rousseau, 54. 

Sage College, 281 - 284. 

Sage, Henry W., 282. 

"Sakuntala," 18. 

Sampson, Prof. Martin 
Wright, 260. 

Scott, George W., 238. 

Sears, Mary, 302. 

Seelye, Harriett C, 15. 

Seelye, Rev. Lauremus Clark, 
LL.D., 8-30. 

Sepiad, The, 167. 

Shakespeare Club, 47. 

Sherwood, Josephine, 112. 

Shipard, John J., 271. 

Shorter, Alfred, 22,7. 

Shorter College, 237, 238. 

Sibyl, The, 176. 

Sill, Anna P., 195, ig*', 198, 
200. 

Simmons College, 217 - 224. 

Simmons, John, 217. 

Slater, Mrs. Horatio, 165. 

Small, President, 288. 

Smith, Austin, 3. 

Smith College, i - 30, 136, 306. 

Smith, F. M., 215. 

Smith, Harriett, 6. 

Smith, Sophia, 1-8. 

Smith, William Waugh, 154. 

Society for the Collegiate In- 
struction of Women, 99. 

Southern Female College, 
238. 

Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 257.- 

Stetson University, 232. 

Stevenson, Bertha M., 293. 

Stewart, Philo P., 271. 

Story, Mary, 106. 

Story, William, 106. 

Swathmore College, 286, 287. 

Syracuse University, 279. 

Taylor, Dr. Joseph W., 1 19. 
Taylor, President, 62. 



Thaxter, Celia, 106. 
Thetford, Vt., 185. 
Thomas, President, 242. 
Thwing, President, 219, 243, 

274. 
Tufts College, 285, 286. 
Tulane University, 225, 232. 

Union College, 9, 172. 
University of California, 247 - 

249. 
University of Cincinnati, 264 - 

266. 
University of Colorado, 275. 
University of Denver, 275. 
University of Illinois, 261 - 

264. 
University of Iowa, 266, 267. 
University of Michigan, 253 - 

255- 
University of Minnesota, 249 - 

253. 
University of Missouri, 232- 

235. 
University of Nashville, 232. 
University of Nebraska, 254. 
University of Texas, 232. 
University of Vermont, 288. 
University of Wisconsin, 257 - 

260. 

Van Ness, Governor, 289. 
Vassar College, 54 - 70, 97. 
Vassar, Matthew, 54 - 59, 173. 
Vaughan House, 106. 

Walker, Susan G., 121. 
Watertown, 34. 
Weed, Miss Ella, 138. 
Weld, Rev. Thomas, 102. 
Wells, Carolyn, 143. 
Wells College, 183 - 193. 
Wells, Henry, 183. 
Wellesley College, 31 - 53. 
Wesleyan University, 289. 
Western Reserve University, 

274. 
Wheeler, President, 247. 



The College Girl of America 

Sarah Wyman, 



319 



Whitman, 

107. 
Willard, Frances, 268. 
Wood, A. A., 190. 
Wells, Henry, 183, 185. 
Woman's College in Brown 

University, 163 - 169. 



Woman's College of Balti- 
more, 144- 153. 
Woman's College, Richmond, 

239- 
Woolley, President, 89. 
Wright, Alice Morgan, 18. 






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